Newborn Under the Christmas Tree

Jumping out of the bed, she raced for the door and yanked it open.

The lounge was empty.

Logically, she knew that Liam wouldn’t have taken Jamie far—they were in his home, for heaven’s sake—but that didn’t make her heart pound any less. Pausing only to grab her slippers—the stone floors were freezing—she dashed out of Liam’s suite and headed for the stairs, listening all the while for the sound of a baby’s cries.

She heard nothing.

Nothing as she passed the Christmas tree where they’d found him, nothing as she ran past the library. Nothing at all...until she neared the kitchen.

The smell of bacon cooking was unmistakable, but it was far too early for Maud to have arrived. And Maud didn’t sing songs from the musicals in a light tenor.

Alice slowed, smiling, as she took the steps down to the kitchen.

Inside, she saw Liam at the stove, turning bacon as he sang, while Jamie lay on a blanket, surrounded by cushions, on the floor a few feet away.

‘Ready for breakfast?’ he asked without turning, and she wondered how he knew she was there.

‘You said you weren’t going to take him anywhere.’

‘You said,’ Liam corrected her. ‘And I didn’t. We’re still in the castle.’

‘I meant stay in the suite.’

‘He got bored, and I didn’t want him to wake you up. So I took him on a little tour of the castle, introduced him to Rusty outside your office, and now we’re raiding Maud’s supplies to make you breakfast.’

‘That’s...kind of you.’ She crossed to where Jamie was staring into the middle distance and knelt beside him to hide her confusion.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected when Liam had offered to help her out with Jamie, but breakfast hadn’t really been part of it.

‘He seems content,’ she said, tucking Jamie’s hands back under the blanket.

‘He’s a very happy baby, most of the time.’ Liam flipped the bacon onto slices of bread already laid out on plates on the counter. ‘Surprisingly.’

‘Why surprising?’ They’d taken good care of him so far. Why wouldn’t he be happy?

Liam added the second slices of bread to the bacon sandwiches and handed her a plate. ‘Well, considering the first thing that happened to him after his birth was being abandoned...’

‘Since he can’t focus his eyes properly or control his hands, I doubt that the significance of that event has hit him just yet,’ Alice said drily.

‘Maybe not. But it’s only a matter of time.’ Liam took a large bite of his sandwich, as if trying to stop himself talking.

Alice considered him across the table. This wasn’t just idle talk. This was personal for him, somehow.

‘Who abandoned you?’ she asked softly.

Liam took another bite instead of answering.

‘Ever since we found him... This is personal for you, isn’t it? Because of your dad?’

‘My father,’ Liam corrected. ‘I never knew him well enough to call him Dad.’

‘Right.’ Alice trawled through her sleep-deprived brain to try to remember what she knew about Liam’s family. She knew that his father had never acknowledged that he was his son before he’d died. That had to impact on a person. And his mother... What had happened to his mother? ‘What about your mum?’

‘She died when I was ten.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ Death wasn’t abandonment, she knew, but it could feel like it. She frowned. ‘Where did you go?’ He’d mentioned foster parents the night before, but in the middle of everything it hadn’t fully registered. And it didn’t answer the obvious question: Why hadn’t he gone to stay with Rose?

‘Does it matter?’ he said irritably, his usual cool evaporating for a moment.

‘You don’t have to—’ she started, but he interrupted her with a heavy sigh.

‘No. It’s fine.’ He shrugged. ‘It was all a long time ago. I stayed with some of my mum’s family for a while, over in Australia. But they couldn’t cope with me.’

‘You were a troublemaker?’

‘I was a nightmare.’

She could imagine it easily enough. A guy didn’t get as rich and successful as young as Liam had unless he was willing to take risks. And that kind of risk-taking didn’t tend to manifest itself well in teenage boys, from her observations.

‘So where did you go then?’

He looked down at Jamie. ‘Foster homes, mostly. Like I told you last night. I bounced around between a few of them and the care homes.’

‘Why didn’t you come to Thornwood? I’m sure Rose would—’

‘Yeah, well, maybe you didn’t know Rose as well as you think,’ he snapped, loud enough to draw a startled cry from Jamie.

Alice dropped her sandwich to her plate and went to pick the baby up, glad of the excuse to turn her back on Liam’s anger. Even if it wasn’t really directed at her, just the sound of it made her nervous, and she didn’t need him seeing that.

Behind her, he sighed, loud enough for her to hear. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset Jamie.’

‘He’s fine.’ And he was. Alice held him close against her body and remembered how special it had felt, every time he’d woken up in the night wanting her. She was sure it was the sort of feeling that wore off as the sleep deprivation increased, but for now it was magical. Especially since she wouldn’t be doing it for long.

Sucking in a breath, she turned back to face him. ‘What happened with Rose?’

CHAPTER NINE

LIAM TIPPED HIS chair back on two legs and stared at his hands. What had happened with Rose? That was a question he’d asked himself a million times over the years. What had he done at ten years old that meant he wasn’t good enough for his great-aunt? And what had changed between then and now, to mean that she’d left him everything she held dear?

Looking up, he met Alice’s eyes. She’d known Rose better than anyone at the end, he’d bet. Maybe she’d be able to explain it to him.

‘I was ten,’ he said, figuring it was easiest to just get it over with. She’d find out eventually. It might as well be him that told her. ‘I’d been kicked out of my uncle’s house in Brisbane, and the authorities were running out of places to put me. Someone figured out about my father’s family over here in the UK and got in touch with Rose, who was more or less all that was left of it by then. She agreed to meet me.’

‘You came to Thornwood?’

‘Briefly.’ Sighing, he let his chair drop back to all four legs again. ‘I pitched up here, freezing cold and miserable, and this creepy old guy answered the door—the butler. He looked down his long nose at me and... I knew this wasn’t the place for me.’

‘What did you do?’ From her tone, Liam knew she’d probably already guessed. Apparently he was getting predictable in his old age.

‘I acted up. I was rude, objectionable and did everything I could to make sure Rose wouldn’t take me in.’

‘And she didn’t.’

‘No, she didn’t.’ What he didn’t tell her, of course, was how much he’d wanted her to. How desperate he’d been for someone—even this old lady who was his only link to his father—to look past his act and see how much he needed her.

Of course, she hadn’t.

‘She sent you back?’

‘Worse.’ Liam tried to stop the pain in his chest at the memory. ‘She looked down into my eyes, stared for a while, then stepped back and said, “Well, he’s a Howlett all right. Can’t mistake those eyes.” That was the first time anyone from my father’s family had ever officially acknowledged me.’

‘What was so bad about that?’

‘Because that got my hopes up.’ Just remembering that hope, that brief shining moment when he’d imagined the possibility of family again, made acid bur

n in his throat even now. He shrugged the memory away. He didn’t need that any more. ‘But the next day I got the message—she couldn’t take me in. So it was back to the foster system for me. It taught me a valuable lesson at least, I suppose.’

‘What lesson?’

‘That you can’t rely on anyone—especially not family.’

He’d expected her to do as all his ex-girlfriends had when he’d expressed the sentiment—tell him he was a cynic, or try to convince him that he just hadn’t met the right person yet. But instead Alice gave him a small smile and said, ‘It took me twenty-four years to learn that one.’

‘A man?’

‘Yes.’ One of the tiny pieces that made up the puzzle of Alice Walters fell into place. He wanted to know more, but before he could formulate the right question she said, ‘That wasn’t the last time you saw Rose, though, was it? You said it had been fifteen years...’