Christmas Miracle: Their Christmas Family Miracle. Shirley Jump
Ridiculous. And dangerous. They both had far too much baggage, and it would be dicing with disaster, no matter how appealing the physical package. And there was no way he wanted any other kind of relationship. So, although he was loath to disturb the dog, he’d finally eased his toes out from under his side and left the room.
And then had to work out, in his muddled, tired mind, what had happened to his bags.
He detoured into the sitting room and picked up his painkillers, then made his way slowly and carefully up the stairs. He was getting stiffer, he realised. Maybe he needed a bath—a long, hot soak—except that he’d almost inevitably fall asleep in it and wake up cold and wrinkled in the middle of the night. And, anyway, he hated baths.
A shower? No. There was the difficulty of his cast to consider, and sealing it in a bag was beyond him at the moment. He’d really had enough. He’d deal with it tomorrow.
Reluctantly abandoning the tempting thought of hot water sluicing over his body, he eased off his clothes, found his wash things in the bag that had indeed arrived in his room, cleaned his teeth and then crawled into bed.
Bliss.
There was nothing like your own bed, he thought, closing his eyes with a long, unravelling sigh. And then he remembered he hadn’t taken the painkillers, and he needed to before he went to sleep or his arm would wake him in the night.
He put the light back on and got out of bed again, filled a glass with water and came back to the bed. He’d thrown the pills on the bedside chest, and he took two and opened the top drawer to put them in.
And there it was.
Lying in the drawer, jumbled up with pens and cufflinks and bits of loose change. Oh, Lord. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he pulled the little frame out and stared down at the faces laughing back up at him—Rachel, full of life as usual, sitting on the grass with Ben in between her knees, his little hands filled with grass mowings and his eyes alight with mischief. He’d been throwing the grass mowings all over her, and they’d all been laughing.
And six months later, five years ago today, they’d been mown down by a drunk driver who’d just left his office Christmas party. They’d been doing some last-minute shopping—collecting a watch she’d bought him, he discovered when he eventually went through the bag of their things he’d been given at the hospital. He’d worn it every day for the last five years—until it had been shattered, smashed to bits against an alpine tree during the avalanche.
An avalanche that had brought him home—to a woman called Amelia, and her three innocent and displaced children.
Was this Rachel’s doing? Trying to tell him to move on, to forget them both?
He traced their faces with his finger, swallowing down the grief that had never really left him, the grief that sent him away every Christmas to try and forget the unforgettable, to escape the inescapable.
He put the photo back in the drawer and closed it softly, turned off the light, then lay back down and stared dry-eyed into the night.
She couldn’t sleep.
Something had woken her—some strange sound, although how she could know the sounds of the house so well already she had no idea, but somehow she did, and this one was strange.
She got out of bed and checked the children, but all of them were sleeping, Thomas flat out on his back with his arms flung up over his head, Edward on his tummy with one leg stuck out the side, and Kitty curled on her side with her hand under her cheek and her battered old teddy snuggled in the crook of her arm.
So not them, then.
Jake?
She looked over the banisters, but all was quiet and there was no light.
Rufus?
Oh, Lord, Rufus. Did he want to go out? Was that what had woken her, him yipping or scratching at the door?
She pulled on a jumper over her pyjamas—because, of course, in her haste she’d left her dressing gown on the back of the door at her sister’s—and tiptoed down the stairs, glancing along to Jake’s room as she reached the head of the lower flight.
She’d brought his luggage up earlier while he was sleeping and put it in there, because he couldn’t possibly manage to lug it up there himself, and she’d had her first look at his room.
It was over the formal drawing room, with an arched opening to the bathroom at the bay window end, and a great rolltop bath sat in the middle, with what must be the most spectacular view along the endless lawn to the woods in the distance. She couldn’t picture him in it at all, there was a huge double shower the size of the average wetroom that seemed much more likely, and a pair of gleaming washbasins, and in a separate little room with its own basin and marble-tiled walls was a loo.
And at the opposite end of the room was the bed. Old, solid, a vast and imposing four-poster, the head end and the top filled in with heavily carved panelling, it was perfect for the room. Perfect for the house. The sort of bed where love was made and children were born and people slipped quietly away at the end of their lives, safe in its arms.
It was a wonderful, wonderful bed. And not in the least monastic. She could picture him in it so easily.
Was he lying in it now? She didn’t know. Maybe, maybe not—and she was mad to think about it.
There was no light on, and the house was in silence, but it felt different, she thought. There was something about it which had changed with his arrival, a sort of—rightness, as if the house had relaxed now he was home.
Which didn’t explain what had woken her. And the door to his room was open a crack. She’d gone down to let the dog out and tidy up the kitchen after she’d settled the children and finished unpacking their things and he must have come upstairs by then, but she hadn’t noticed the door open. Perhaps he’d come out again to get something and hadn’t shut it, and that was what had woken her, but there was no sign of him now.
She went down to the breakfast room, guided only by the moonlight, and opened the door, and she heard the gentle thump of the dog’s tail on the floor and the clatter of his nails.
‘Hello, my lovely man,’ she crooned, crouching down and pulling gently on his ears. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I take it you’re talking to the dog.’
She gave a little shriek and pressed her hand to her chest, then started to laugh. ‘Good grief, Jake, you scared me to death!’ She straightened up and reached for the light, then hesitated, conscious of her tired old pyjamas. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I couldn’t sleep. You?’
‘I thought I heard a noise.’
He laughed softly. ‘In this house? Of course you heard a noise! It creaks like a ship.’
‘I know. It settles. I love it—it sounds as if it’s relaxing. No, there was something else. It must have been you.’
‘I stumbled over the dog—he came to see me and I hadn’t put the light on and I kicked him by accident and he yelped—and, before you ask, he’s fine. I nudged him, really, but he seemed a bit upset by it, so I sat with him.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry—he does get underfoot and—well, I think he was kicked as a puppy. Has he forgiven you?’
The soft sound of Jake’s laughter curled round her again, warming her. ‘I think so. He’s been on my lap.’
‘Ah. Sounds like it, then.’ She hesitated, wondering if she should leave him to it and go back to bed, but sensing that there was something wrong, something more than he was telling her. ‘How’s the fire?’
‘OK. I think it could do with more wood.’
‘I’ll get some.’
She went out of the back door and brought in an armful of logs, putting on the kitchen light