A Yorkshire Christmas (11 page)

But you almost did. You came very, very close.

“So what happened when she stole all the jewelry?” Claire asked.

“She blamed me.” He looked up with a bleak smile. “And of course her parents believed her. They’d never liked me, assumed I was a bad influence. And maybe I was.” He was silent for a moment, considering. “I never called her on any of her crap. Maybe I should have.”

“You can’t blame yourself—”

He shrugged. “I chose to get involved with her, to stay involved with her even after I knew she was spiraling out of control.” He paused, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And I choose to take the blame when she pointed the finger at me.”

Claire’s mouth dropped open. “What—”

“I had no proof that I didn’t steal the stuff, and her parents would never believe me over her,” Noah explained with a shrug. “Besides, I knew she adored her parents even if they never seemed to have time for her, just money. I didn’t want to shatter whatever they did feel for her.” He paused and then added quietly, “And I loved her, even though I knew it was crazy.”

Tears stung Claire’s eyes and she blinked them back rapidly. “I know what that’s like.”

“Do you?” He gave her a lingering look, seeming to want to say more. “Anyway, it landed me in prison for eighteen months. Her parents knew the judge, and I got the maximum sentence. So I never finished college or any of that. And when I’d been inside for just a couple of weeks, Dani wrote and told me she was pregnant.”

“Oh, Noah,” Claire said softly.

“I read her the riot act, as much as I could from prison.” He smiled wryly. “I told her she had to clean up her act, take care of herself.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “It was terrible, knowing I was so powerless to help her or do anything. And then when I got out her parents stacked it so I had no involvement with Molly. They claimed I was a
risk
to her.” His voice choked on the word and he looked away.

“The irony was,” he continued after a moment, his voice low and level again, “they weren’t even interested in her. Dani told me they never saw her. They just set Dani and Molly up in a townhouse in York and threw money at them. I didn’t get to see Molly until she was nearly three. And since then it’s only been Saturday afternoons, in York. I’ve been afraid to ask for more, in case her parents come down hard again. They have the power. But maybe I should.” His face settled into grim lines. “Maybe I should,” he said again, quietly, and Claire longed to touch him, a squeeze of his hand or a touch of his shoulder. She didn’t move, but she ached with the need to comfort him.

“I should go check on Molly,” he said after a moment, and drained his coffee cup. “But don’t go yet. I still want to talk to you.”

A wary thrill ran through her at his words and she nodded from behind her coffee cup. “Okay.”

Noah went upstairs and Claire took their empty mugs into the kitchen, rinsing them in the sink and tidying up a bit more, wanting to keep busy. She had no idea what Noah wanted to talk to her about when he came back downstairs. Was it stupid to feel a heady mix of hope and fear? Was she reading too much into such small, simple things?

He’d helped her with her car; she’d helped him with his kid. Maybe that’s all it was. But he’d told her so much about himself, and her heart ached for him. She didn’t want this just to be tit for tat.

“She’s asleep.”

Claire whirled around, one hand pressed to her chest. Noah stood in the doorway of the kitchen, his face cast in shadow so she couldn’t read his expression. He took a step into the room, but even in the light she still couldn’t tell what he was thinking—or feeling.

“She was shattered,” he continued, and it took Claire a second to realize he meant tired. Her godmother said that sometimes.
Shattered
. It was how she felt, and not in a tired kind of way. “A big day.”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to tell you, though,” he continued in his low, steady voice, “that I didn’t mean to hijack your quiet holiday. Molly’s taken a liking to you, and you’ve made things so much easier between us, so I want to thank you for that, but you don’t need to feel like you have to be here—”

“
Don’t
,” Claire interjected, her voice coming out shamefully choked. “Don’t
thank
me.”

Noah took a step towards her. “Claire—”

She turned away, hating that she was so near tears. So it had been tit for tat, after all. Simply doing each other favors. Stupid, stupid Claire.

“I’ve said something wrong,” Noah said quietly. Claire took a deep breath and brushed at her eyes before turning around.

“No, you haven’t. You’re kind to let me off the hook, but I’ve wanted to be here. I wouldn’t have agreed if I hadn’t.”

“I’ve wanted you to be here,” Noah answered quietly.

“But you want time alone with Molly,” Claire finished for him. Noah shook his head, and then gave her a wry smile.

“I do, of course I do, because she’s my daughter. But having you here has been good—for both of us. It’s smoothed out the rough edges between Molly and me, and…” He paused, seeming to search for words. “I’ve really enjoyed it,” he finished. “Everything. Snowball fights, cutting down the Christmas tree, even just sitting around drinking hot chocolate. I’m… glad you’ve been here.” He smiled awkwardly, his cheeks touched by a faint flush, and Claire smiled back at him, her heart thudding hard.

“I’ve been glad, too,” she told him.

“So you don’t mind not having a quiet Christmas?” Noah asked with a crooked smile, and Claire shook her head.

“I’m not sure I ever wanted that in the first place. I was just running away.”

“From what?”

How much to tell, to confess? “From my mistakes.” He arched an eyebrow, waiting, and she continued hesitantly, “I was involved with a man. Not very involved, not… well.” No need to get graphic. “But it ended badly. It would have ended very badly, if I’d kept going with it.” She could see the confusion on Noah’s face and knew she needed to spell it out. “He was married.”

“Oh.” There was no condemnation in Noah’s voice, just understanding.

Even so, Claire felt tears threaten and she had to blink rapidly, swallow hard. She hadn’t told anyone this. Who could she have told? Her friends and faculty at Stirling would have been shocked, and rightly so. She might have lost her job. As for her family…

“So what happened?” Noah asked quietly.

Claire took a ragged breath. “His daughter Emma was—is—one of my students. Mark.” She was silent for a moment, trying to order her thoughts, and Noah waited, his gaze steady, so steady on her. The look in his eyes gave her the courage to tell him the whole truth, the confidence to know he wouldn’t judge her… even if she already had judged herself. “Emma is one of my best students. One of my favorites. I was helping her with a special research project she was doing for extra credit, and so we spent a lot of time together, just the two of us, after school. Mark would pick her up from those sessions, and so I got to know him that way.”

The corner of his mouth quirked upwards even as the look in his eyes remained both sad and understanding. “And one thing led to another?”

“Basically.” She let out a shaky laugh. “Emma invited me to an exhibit at the Natural History Museum. It related to her research topic, and I wanted to encourage her. Mark came with us, and it felt…” Like a family. How could she explain how lovely it had felt to be part of things, when the same thing was happening here and now, with Noah and Molly?

History was repeating itself, and maybe that was because she intended it to do so. She just couldn’t help herself.

“Claire.” Noah stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. Claire blinked at him, jolted from his thoughts, surprised by his closeness. “Stop beating yourself up over this,” he told her. “There’s no point. Trust me, I’ve been there, done that for way too long already.”

“It’s hard not to,” she whispered.

“I know.” He smiled sadly down at her.

A thrill ran through her as she became aware of his hands, so warm and solid on her shoulders, almost brushing the tops of her breasts. His face was close to hers, close enough she could see the way his lashes swept his cheeks when he blinked, and how his five o’clock shadow’s worth of stubble glinted in the dim light. She breathed in the smell of him—leather and wood and a little sheep. A pleasant, masculine smell. A Noah smell.

How can you already know his smell?

But she did, and she craved it. Craved him.

Gently, he brushed a tendril of hair from her cheek, tucked it behind her ear. Claire’s breath hitched and every sense and sinew strained and waited, wanting him to kiss her. Needing him to.

And he almost did. He lowered his head, and her lips parted in expectation. She very nearly stood on her tiptoes to close that little space between their mouths.

But then Noah eased back with the kind of apologetic, self-deprecating smile that made Claire want to weep in an entirely different way.

“So what happened?” he asked, and it took Claire a minute to compose herself, to pretend she hadn’t just been waiting with every sense and sinew for him to kiss her.

“I finally woke up,” she said simply. “I realized what was happening. We’d been spending a lot of time together by then—both with Emma and just the two of us. He told me his wife worked all the time, didn’t care about him or Emma.” She held up a hand to forestall him, even though he hadn’t looked as if he were about to say anything. “I know that’s what they all say. And it’s no excuse at all, anyway.”

He gave her a faint smile. “I know you know that.”

“How would you know what I know?” she asked with a shaky laugh.

“You’re a good person, Claire.”

More tears sprang to her eyes and she couldn’t quite blink these ones away. One escaped, trickling down her cheek as she whispered her confession. “I don’t feel like I’m a good person. I feel like I came a hair’s breadth from selling my soul. From betraying everything I am and believed in, and for what? A little happiness? Not even a little. It was all lies, anyway. His wife did care about them. I realized that—after.” She’d crept out of Mark’s bedroom, ashamed and sick at heart at how close she’d come to having an affair with a married man, and had seen a note scribbled by Emma’s mother to the two of them stuck in the hall mirror.

Such a small thing, and yet so vital. Those little, easy words spoke of a love and affection that Mark had pretended wasn’t there. And when Emma had opened her bedroom door and seen, in appalled silence, her history teacher creeping out of her apartment after midnight, her clothing rumpled and her hair in a tangle about her face…

With a terrible, burning shame, Claire had realized just how much of an intruder and impostor she’d really been.

And was the same thing happening again, just in a different way?

“You are a good person,” Noah said, his voice roughening, and he brushed her single tear away with the pad of his thumb before pulling her into a sudden, surprising, and much-needed hug.

Claire melted into that hug, her whole body softening and yielding to his. She needed another person’s arms around her. Another person’s total acceptance. She closed her eyes, feeling the hot press of the tears she’d held back against her lids. Put her arms around Noah and accepted his comfort and faith as if it were the only anchor in the drowning sea of her own emotions and guilt.

“Thank you,” she finally whispered, easing back, too emotional to be embarrassed by what she’d said and shown. Maybe that would come later.

“Will you spend tomorrow with us?” Noah asked. “I don’t know what we’ve got planned, but both Molly and I want to spend the day with you.”

Claire gave him a wobbly smile. Her heart felt full of so many different emotions, but the one she could separate out from the rest was happiness. “I want that too,” she said.

‡

N
oah woke up
the next morning after a restless night and the first thought that flashed into his panic-stricken mind was that he hadn’t bought a Christmas present for Molly.

He sat up in bed, driving a hand through his hair as he blinked sleep from his eyes. It was still pitch-dark out, not even five o’clock in the morning, but as a farmer he was up and dressed and out in the barn well before six. Now he swore quietly, regret lashing him. How could he have been so stupid, not to have a present for his daughter? It was Christmas
Eve
.

In years past he’d seen Molly the Saturday after Christmas, and he’d always picked her up something on the way into York. Not a possibility now and he should have realized before it was too late. Taking Molly to the shops to buy her own present on Christmas Eve was practically the definition of the hands-off, deadbeat dad.

With a groan aimed entirely at himself, Noah threw off the duvet and reached for his jeans. He made his way downstairs, fumbling in the dark, trying not to wake up Molly. In the kitchen he fed Jake, who sprang to attention as soon as Noah put his foot on the bottom stair, and then put the kettle on to boil. He stood with one hip braced against the Aga, gazing unseeingly out the window at the unyielding darkness of a predawn winter, and thought of Claire.