The Unexpected Holiday Gift

‘Will you be home before Santa comes?’

‘Actually,’ she said, dropping her voice to a secretive whisper, ‘I just heard—Father Christmas is snowed in too!’

‘Nooo...’ Ivy breathed, amazed.

‘Yes. So he’s postponing Christmas! I can’t remember the last time that happened!’ Because it never had. But Ivy didn’t know that yet.

‘Does that mean he won’t be bringing my presents?’ Ivy asked, obviously anxious.

‘Of course he will! You’ve been such a good girl this year, he wouldn’t not bring you presents. It just means that he might have to come tomorrow night instead of tonight. And I’m sure I’ll be back by then.’ If she and Jacob hadn’t killed each other before Boxing Day.

‘What are we going to do tomorrow then?’ Ivy sounded confused but hadn’t expressed any disbelief yet. Clara took that as a good sign.

‘Have a practice Christmas, of course!’ She injected as much fun as she could into the words. ‘You and Auntie Merry can practise opening a few presents, eating Christmas dinner, pulling crackers, wearing the hats and telling the jokes...all the usual things. Then, when I get home, we can do it all again for real, once Santa has been!’

‘So I get two Christmases this year?’

Clara let out a small sigh of relief at the excitement in her daughter’s voice. ‘Exactly!’

‘Brilliant!’ There was a clunk, the familiar sound of Ivy dropping the phone as she got bored and wandered off. In the distance, Clara heard her excited chatter. ‘Auntie Merry! I get two Christmases this year! Did you know? Santa’s stuck too!’

Clara waited, listening to the plans for the Christmas she was missing, and wiped a rogue tear from her cheek. She didn’t have time to break down now, not with Jacob here.

Although, until those snowploughs made it up here, she had nothing but time.

Eventually, Merry came back on the line. ‘Okay?’

‘Seems to be.’ Clara sniffed. ‘Tell her I love her, yeah? And you’ll be okay tucking her in? You know she likes to sleep with—’

‘Blue Ted,’ Merry finished for her. ‘I know. I’ve babysat for her a hundred times. We’ll be fine.’

‘I know you will. I just wish I was there.’

‘And you will be. Really soon,’ Merry said soothingly. ‘Now get off the line so I can phone whoever is in charge of snowploughs around here and work out how to postpone Christmas.’

‘Thank you, Merry.’

‘For you, anything. Go and make your ex-husband and the father of your child miserable. That should cheer you up.’

Clara gave a watery chuckle. Merry had all of the best ideas.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

JACOB STARED AT THE bottle of brandy. It stared back. Well, probably it didn’t but he’d drunk a good quarter of it now so it felt as if it might.

‘So...your latest solution to the snow issue is getting drunk?’ Clara’s voice from the doorway made him spin round—too fast, as it turned out. It took a good thirty seconds for the rest of the room to catch up.

‘I called Heather,’ he informed her. ‘Before the brandy.’

‘Are they all okay?’ Sitting down across the table from him, she poured herself a small measure into a clean tumbler. She’d never been a big drinker, he remembered. Apparently being snowbound in a castle with him was driving her to it.

‘Fine. They’re actually in a hotel in Inverness at the moment. They’re hoping to travel up tomorrow morning, meet us here if the snow has cleared enough.’ So his father would be spending his last Christmas driving on treacherous Scottish roads, trying to save his only son from his own stupidity. Just the way he wanted it, Jacob was sure.

Time for another brandy.

Clara moved the bottle out of his reach as he moved across the table to grab it. ‘You’re a terrible drinker, Jacob. You’re plastered after about two pints.’

‘I might have changed.’ As he said the words, he thought of all the ways he had changed, or might have changed since she’d left. Drinking wasn’t one of them but she didn’t know that.

‘Apparently not.’ The certainty in her voice told him she wasn’t just talking about alcohol. ‘But anyway. Here’s to a perfect Christmas.’ Clara raised her glass and took a long swallow. ‘Somehow I don’t think you’re going to be giving me a top recommendation after this.’

‘I don’t blame you for the snow, Clara,’ he said. For many other things, sure. But not the snow.

‘But I bet you’re blaming yourself, aren’t you?’ Her eyes were too knowing, and she saw too deep. He glanced away the moment her gaze met his. How did she always manage to do that? Pick up on his biggest insecurity and dig right in to it?

‘I was the one who wanted Christmas in the Highlands. The part of Britain voted most likely to get snow at Christmas.’ It was his fault. His failure.

‘And I was the one who brought you to a castle on top of a hill,’ Clara countered. ‘Place least likely to get its roads gritted, or cleared by the snowploughs first.’

‘It’s what I asked for.’

‘What if I told you I had an ulterior motive for bringing you here?’ Clara asked.

Suddenly, Jacob’s mind filled with exotic scenarios. Had she brought him here purposefully to punish him? Or, more likely, to tell him about his daughter... ‘What ulterior motive?’

‘I’d booked this place for another client.’ Clara took another sip of brandy, her eyes warily peering over the rim of the glass, watching to see how he’d react. ‘They pulled out and left me liable for the reservation fee, thanks to a contract screw-up. Holding your Christmas here meant I wasn’t out of pocket after all.’

‘I see.’ It wasn’t what he’d expected but part of him had to admire her business sense. ‘So it really is your fault that we’re snowed in and stranded in a castle at the top of a hill.’

‘Hey, you asked for a white Christmas.’

Jacob couldn’t help it; the laughter burst out of him before he could think. Somehow, tossing the blame for their predicament back and forth had defused some of the awful tension that had been growing between them since they’d arrived. After a moment Clara joined in, giggling into her brandy. Jacob marvelled at her. For once, she looked just like the Clara he remembered. The woman who, he knew now, had fought back against a childhood that could have left her bitter and cruel and instead had chosen to find joy in the world. He’d been scared that being married to him had taken that away from her.

He’d always thought her capacity for joy the most beautiful thing about her.

‘I’m sorry,’

she said once she’d calmed down again. ‘Believe me, I really never intended for this to happen.’

‘Oh, I believe you,’ Jacob said with a half-smile. ‘After all, you’ve made it very clear you’d rather be anywhere else than here with me.’

‘Not anywhere.’ She gave him an odd look, one he couldn’t quite interpret. ‘I just...I’m supposed to be elsewhere tonight. That’s all.’

‘With Ivy.’ It was the child-sized elephant in the room.

‘That’s right.’

‘She must be...four now?’ Even simple mental arithmetic was proving tricky. ‘Is she okay? With Merry?’

Clara raised her eyebrows. ‘Suddenly concerned for the child you didn’t know existed an hour ago? The one you made it rather clear you don’t want in your life?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ His reaction might have strongly hinted at it but he hadn’t actually said the words. ‘And you’re worried about her. I’m just worried about you.’

‘Don’t.’ Clara sighed. ‘Ivy’s having the best slumber party ever with one of her favourite people in the world and, thanks to a story about Santa getting snowed in, is potentially having two Christmases this year, if we don’t get out of here in time. She might be missing me but she’s fine.’

She was a good deal better than Clara was, by the sound of things.

Jacob reached across, took the bottle of brandy and poured a small measure into both of their glasses. ‘Since we’re stuck here...we should talk about it. Her, I mean.’ Clara pulled a face. ‘We’re never going to get a better opportunity than this,’ he pointed out.

‘I know. And you deserve to know everything. I realised this week...it wasn’t just that we didn’t talk when we were married. We didn’t let each other in enough to see the real people behind the lust.’ She waved her glass in the air as she spoke. ‘We thought we had this epic connection, this unprecedented love. But we never really knew the true heart of each other. We never opened up enough for that.’

Jacob stared down at the honey-coloured liquid in his glass. She was right, much as he hated to admit it. He’d wanted to believe that he could be a success as a husband, that he could be what she needed, so he’d only let her see the parts of him that fitted his vision of what that meant—working hard, taking responsibility, earning status, being a success. Everything his father had always done.