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Authors: Emma Darcy

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BOOK: Merry Christmas (Mills & Boon Vintage 90s Modern)
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He sighed, his eyes wry as his fingers curled around hers and his thumb stroked over the hyperactive pulse at her wrist. “A loving mother deserves no less. How about lending me your camera and I’ll take some photos of you and Kimberly choosing the tree?
I’d
like them.”
She laughed and handed him the camera, relieved that peace and goodwill had been restored.
Nevertheless, it concerned her that he’d been so upset about the photographs. How much more upset might he be tonight if she told him the full truth? It was Christmas Eve. She didn’t want this Christmas spoiled. Maybe it was better to leave telling him everything until more time together built a comfort zone and the past was less sharp than it was now.
Or would that make it worse?
How could she continue to be intimate with him while hiding such a big secret?
Meredith fretted over the decision while she and Kimberly selected a tall tree with the most symmetrical shape. They posed on either side of it for Nick to take his photograph. Once the tree was paid for, they set off for home again, the three of them holding part of the long trunk to keep the branches off the ground.
A family, Meredith thought.
Except two of them didn’t know it.
The sense of family was such a happy feeling, the kind of feeling everyone should have at Christmas time. She’d keenly felt the loss of it over the years. Nick and Kimberly must be feeling loss, too, with Denise and Colin Graham gone. Would revealing the truth make it better? Letting them know they still had a very real family? Or would she be destroying memories they held dear?
It’s awful, not knowing...
The words she’d spoken to Kimberly slipped back into her mind. It was the ultimate truth.
She had to tell Nick.
Tonight.
Then they could both figure out how to tell Kimberly.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I
T WAS killing him, not knowing. Twice now he’d unsettled Meredith with his brooding over it. Not that she knew what was eating up his mind, and he couldn’t just blurt it out. If he was wrong, she would think him mad, connecting himself to the lover who’d fathered Kimberly. He didn’t want to confuse her feelings for him. But...he had to know!
Nick paced the living room, impatient for the necessary time to himself to try telephoning his old friends. If anyone would know the critical details of what had happened to him that Christmas thirteen years ago, Jerry and Dave had the inside track. As far as he knew, they’d been with him from start to end of that long vacation.
The tree dominating the corner of the room caught his eye and he stopped, struck by the irony of it all. Another Christmas. Tonight they’d be hanging the decorations on it, making merry.
Merry...
He shook his head, wanting this burden lifted. As soon as Meredith and Kimberly reappeared in their swimming costumes he would send them off to the beach ahead of him. And damn his old friends to hell if they could not be reached!
“Great tree, isn’t it, Merry?”
Nick spun around. They were in the doorway. The sight of Meredith in a body-hugging white maillot, cut high to her hips, took his breath away. Her skin was tanned to the colour of golden honey and glowed like silk, compelling the need to touch. And her legs, her beautiful long legs...the feeling of them winding around him, tangling intimately with his was instantly triggered again, setting his heart pounding, pumping desire into a flood of wanting.
“You haven’t changed into your swimmers.”
Kimberly’s accusing voice dragged his gaze to her. “I put them on under my shorts earlier,” he answered distractedly.
“Well, come on then,” she urged.
“I’ll follow you. I’ve just. remembered a call I should make.”
She groaned. “Not business on Christmas Eve!”
“I won’t be long.”
“But we need you to bring the windsurfer down.”
He shook his head. “Not enough breeze for it yet. Best to wait until after lunch. We’ll try it then.”
A disappointed sigh.
Meredith’s hand gently squeezed Kimberly’s shoulder. “Let’s not hassle Nick. I’m dying for a swim.”
Kimberly’s face broke into a cheeky grin. “Last one into the water is a rotten egg.”
She dashed off with Meredith in laughing pursuit.
Nick was inexorably drawn to follow as far as the veranda, watching the two of them pelting over the sand. Meredith...the woman of his dreams, gloriously real and tangible and part of his life now. Kimberly...her black ponytail swinging, so many likenesses to his side of the family. Was she his daughter?
He watched them run into the surf, squealing and laughing and heart-wrenchingly happy with each other. If Meredith had missed out on this for all these years because of... Nick’s hands gripped the veranda railing hard as a savage sense of loss tore through him.
He had to know.
He strode back into the house, heading straight for the telephone in the kitchen. There’d been no answer from either of the calls he’d made in the early hours of this morning. With it being the Christmas weekend, Jerry and Dave could be anywhere.
None of them was in regular contact, Jerry’s work having taken him to Melbourne, and Dave having married in England and settled in London. They exchanged Christmas cards and met for a drink or dinner on the rare occasions they were in each other’s cities. Nevertheless, the old sense of mateship was always quickly revived and Nick knew they would help if they could. He fiercely willed for one of them to be home.
He tried Jerry’s number first.
No answer.
Frustration rose several notches. He mentally calculated the time in London. Around two in the morning. He didn’t care. The need to know overrode every other consideration.
He dialled the international digits and waited, tension screwing up his stomach as the calling beeps repeated their pattern an excruciating number of times. Relief whooshed through him at the clatter of a receiver being fumbled off the hook.
“Dave?” The name exploded off his lips.
“Yeah. Who’s this?” Voice slurred with sleep.
“Dave, it’s Nick. Nick Hamilton. Sorry to...”
“Hell, man! Do you know what time it is over here?”
“I know but I couldn’t get through before.”
“Christmas...lines are jammed.” The resigned mutter was followed by more alert interest. “So what’s up?”
“This is very important to me, Dave. I need your help.”
“Right! You’ve got it.” No hesitation.
Nick took a deep breath. “Remember the trip we went on when we finished college? The one where I ended up in hospital with a cracked skull.”
“Sure I remember it. We hit all the great surfing beaches, right up the coast to Tweed Heads, which was where you copped it.”
“Tell me the beaches, Dave.”
“You ring me up in the middle of the. night to find out about beaches?”
“No, it’s more than that. I need you to fill in that time for me. It’s a blank to me, Dave. Help me with it. Please?”
“Okay. Let me think. Umm... first we stopped off at Boomerang near Forster. Great surf. We even had a school of dolphins swim in one day...”
“Next beach,” Nick pressed.
“That’d be Flynn’s at Port Macquarie.”
“After that?”
“South West Rocks, east of Kempsey.”
“And then?”
“Sawtell. Near Coff’s Harbour.”
Coff’s Harbour!
Nick swallowed hard. “Dave, did I get tied up with a girl in Coff’s Harbour?”
“Ah-ha! Woman trouble! Come back to haunt you, has she?” Salacious interest.
Nick closed his eyes. Dave couldn’t have spoken a truer word than
haunt.
“So there was someone,” he pressed on, determined to pin everything down.
“Sure was! You were head over heels, man! No way were you going to leave her. You told us we could travel on if we wanted, but you’d found something a hell of a lot better than surfing beaches, and wild horses couldn’t drag you away.”
“So why didn’t I stay?”
“Her old woman told you she was only sixteen. A bit young for what you two were getting up to, old son. In the end you saw sense and we travelled on. Put a spike in your usual good humour, though. You shouldn’t have taken that spill at Tweed Heads, you know. Your mind simply wasn’t on surfing after Coff’s.”
It fitted. Yet still he needed the final clincher. “What was her name, Dave?”
“Her name...damned if I can remember.”
“Try. Try very hard,” Nick urged, his heart hammering painfully.
“Don’t know that I ever knew,” Dave mused. “You had a special name for her.” He laughed. “Certainly wasn’t her real name.”
“Do you remember it?”
“Sure!” He laughed again. “A good one for this time of year, Nick.”
“Tell me.”
“Merry Christmas. That’s what you called her. Merry Christmas.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
N
ICK jotted down the score, gathered up the playing cards and shuffled them. He looked tired. He’d been rather quiet—almost distant—all evening, only rallying out of his abstraction to respond to Kimberly’s demands on him. Meredith hoped he wasn’t too tired to stay up with her after Kimberly went to bed.
It had been an active day; swimming, windsurfing, setting the Christmas tree up and decorating it. Besides which, he couldn’t have had many hours’ sleep last night. He’d been up early with Kimberly this morning. What would she do if he suggested they retire early?
“This is definitely the last hand, Kimberly,” he warned as he dealt the cards around the table. “Win or lose.”
“But I’m much too excited to go to bed yet, Uncle Nick,” she protested, jiggling around in her chair.
The gin rummy score had been seesawing between them and Nick was in the lead at the moment. Meredith was not in the running to win. Her playing had lacked concentration. She was too distracted, thinking about how best to reveal the truth to Nick.
“You’ve had more than a fair go,” he pointed out. “You asked to stay up until
Carols By Candlelight
was finished on the TV, remember?”
“It’s only just finished.”
“A deal is a deal, my girl.”
She huffed and sorted her hand of cards. “I’d better win, then.”
Much to her delight, and Meredith’s secret relief, she did. Or Nick let her. Either way, there was no more argument about bedtime. She danced around the card table, crowing triumphantly about her victory, gave Nick a hug and a kiss good night, did the same to Meredith, looked longingly at the presents piled under the Christmas tree, then broke into a chorus of “Jingle Bells” as she headed off to her bedroom.
“Hardly a lullaby,” Meredith commented, expecting Nick to smile.
He didn’t. “Let’s clear up,” he said quietly. “Get it out of the way.”
She was instantly aware of tightly held restraint. The relaxed air he had maintained with Kimberly was gone. The inward tension coming from him was so strong, it plunged her into a turmoil of doubt. Was he regretting rushing headlong into an involvement with her?
She looked searchingly at him but his gaze was hooded, looking down at the cards he was packing into their case. He stood to return it to the games cupboard, carrying the writing pad and pen, as well. It prompted her to get moving.
Her hands shook a little as she collected the dirty glasses and took them out to the kitchen sink, her mind racing over what might be wrong. This was the first time they’d been alone together all day. She’d been waiting for it, half in dread, half in eagerness. Now it had come, Nick showed no sign of taking pleasure in her company. Quite the opposite.
She rinsed the glasses and left them on the draining board to dry, feeling driven to return to the living room and confront whatever was on his mind. Her heart fluttered with apprehension but she stuck to her earlier conviction. Better to know than not know.
He was standing, staring at the Christmas tree when she walked in. He swung around at hearing her and gave her a travesty of a smile. “Will you come out to the veranda with me? I don’t want Kimberly overhearing us.”
Meredith nodded and led the way, extremely conscious of him following her and closing the front door after him. When she turned questioningly, he waved her on to the cane armchairs where they had sat and talked the previous evening. He certainly didn’t have making love in mind. Any desire he might be feeling for her was rigidly repressed.
It occurred to her he could be concerned that they had acted recklessly last night. Maybe he wanted to know if she was protected. In the heat of the moment, neither of them had considered consequences. Meredith supposed she should regret the carelessness. Somehow it didn’t seem important.
He waited for her to settle in one of the armchairs, clearly too ill at ease to sit beside her. She saw his hands clench. He moved over to the railing, looking out to sea for several moments before turning his gaze to her.
“I know now that Merry was my special name for you,” he said very quietly. “It was me you were speaking of when you explained it to Kimberly.”
Shock rendered her speechless. He knew. She didn’t have to tell him.
“Were you aware I had no memory of it?” he asked.
The pain in his voice squeezed her heart. Her mind was still in chaos, wondering how and when he’d realised this was not their first involvement. Nevertheless, it was paramount that she answer and answer truthfully. It was what she had wanted...to let him know. Though not for one moment had she anticipated he would preempt her in opening up the past.
She searched for appropriate words, delivering them haltingly. “Your sister told me. She explained about your accident. Then last week, when you came about Kimberly, it was obvious you had no memory of me.”
His hand jerked out in a hopeless little gesture. “I still don’t remember.”
That shocked her anew. “Then how...? I don’t understand...”
“I called Dave today. Dave Ketteridge. He was with me that summer.”
One of Nick’s friends. She remembered them. The other one was called Jerry. Jerry Thompson. The three of them had been mates for years and obviously still in contact since Nick had called Dave today. Which meant he’d known he was Kimberly’s father when he’d joined them in the surf, known all afternoon, all evening. It was amazing he’d hidden it as well as he had, waiting and waiting to get her alone without fear of interruption.
“Why didn’t you contact me?” he asked, stress straining his voice. “At least, let me have the chance to...to...” Pent-up feeling exploded. “Damn it, Merry! It was my child you were carrying. I should have been told.”
There was no way to avoid giving him pain and in justice to herself she had to tell the truth. “I did all I could to reach you, Nick.”
“You met my sister.” The accusation shot from him, carrying a load of anger and frustration.
“Yes. You’d left me her address. To write to you if I wanted to after a year had gone by. When I found out I was pregnant, my stepmother...” That was irrelevant. She took a deep breath and went on, concentrating on keeping her tone quiet and calm. “I caught the bus from Coff’s Harbour to Sydney...”
“Your stepmother threw you out?”
Meredith winced. “Not exactly. Her sister said she’d have me if I worked in her florist shop. I was supposed to be coming to her in Sydney, but I went to your address first.”
“And I wasn’t there.”
“No. Your sister said you’d been invited to go to Harvard and wouldn’t be back for two years.”
“You could have asked her for my address in the U.S.”
Still accusing. Still critical. Meredith looked squarely at him and said, “I did. I was distressed. I made the mistake of telling her I was pregnant to you.”
“Mistake! What do you mean ‘mistake’?” he demanded tersely.
Meredith paused. There was no kind way of saying this. She sighed and recited the facts as they’d been put to her. “She didn’t want your prospects of a great career ruined. She didn’t want you coming home to a girl you’d forgotten, a girl who’d hang a baby on you when you weren’t in a position to take the responsibility of it, a girl who wasn’t old enough or accomplished enough to be a suitable wife. I’d be like an albatross around your neck.”
“She said that?” He was shocked, horrified.
“I guess it was reasonable from her point of view.” Meredith answered flatly.
“So what happened then?”
“I didn’t believe her. I thought...she doesn’t want me.” She looked at him, her eyes aching with the memory. “But I couldn’t believe you wouldn’t want me, Nick. I thought she was lying about your forgetting me.”
His chest heaved with a sharp intake of breath. He released it on a long shuddering sigh. “It was true...yet not true. I dreamed of you. I dreamed of you so many times over the years, when I first saw you at your apartment...” He shook his head. “It’s been driving me crazy.”
Enlightenment dawned. “So that’s why you rang Dave.”
“That and other things...things you said...the way I felt...”
Was he saying he felt the same as he had before? Or had that changed now, with harbouring a sense of betrayal since his call to his friend. He wasn’t coming near her, didn’t want to touch. His dark brooding didn’t invite her touch, either.
Sick at heart, Meredith said, “I tried to find Dave, Nick. And Jerry. They were my only other leads to you.”
He stiffened. “Jerry knew where I was. I wrote to him.”
“There are five pages of Thompsons in the Sydney phone book,” Meredith informed him. “I tried Ketteridge first.”
He frowned. “Dave went backpacking overseas that year,” he muttered reminiscently.
“His father told me they were lucky if he sent a postcard now and then. The last one was from Turkey. It said Dave was heading for India. They knew you were in the U.S. but didn’t have an address. I was given Jerry’s home number.”
“And Jerry didn’t help?” Sheer incredulity.
“His mother answered the phone. She curtly informed me he’d moved away from home and she was sick of girls he’d left behind ringing him up. If he wanted to contact me he would. I managed to get in a question about you and she said as far as she was concerned, the same principle applied.”
He groaned and pushed away from the railing, pacing the veranda to the steps and back, then throwing out his hands in an aggressive appeal. “You could have tried a letter to Harvard University.”
The question cracked on her like a whip. Her head snapped up. “Could I, Nick?” She pushed out of the chair to face him on a more equal level, her eyes blazing a challenge to his assertion. “I’d had every door shut in my face. Your sister said you’d forgotten me. Mrs. Thompson scorned me for running after you. It had been months since you walked away from me. Skipping out, my stepmother called it.”
“I didn’t,” he swiftly defended. “It was for your sake I left.”
“You weren’t there to tell me that,” she shot back at him.
“God damn it!” he exploded. “I still had the right to know.”
“Rage at your sister then.” Her voice shook with the emotional torment she’d been put through.
“She
judged for you.
She
knew you best.
She
made the decision.”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his brow, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I keep thinking...all these years...all these years...I should have been told.”
“And I’m the only one you’ve got to blame. Is that it, Nick?” she mocked in a surge of bitterness for all the lost years.
“No!” His eyes flew open in a flare of anguish. His hand came down in a clenched fist, smacking into the palm of his other hand for emphasis. “I need to understand...to get the facts straight in my mind.”
“To understand,” she repeated derisively. She shook her head and swung away from him, moving over to the railing and looking bleakly at a sea that had been silent witness to her sorrows many, many times. “You couldn’t imagine in a million years how it was for me.”
A heavy sigh. “I do realise Denise has a lot to answer for,” he quietly acknowledged. “I don’t blame you, Merry. I just wish...”
“You think I didn’t wish?”
He’d scraped the old wounds raw again, making her voice harsh. She swallowed hard and lifted her gaze to the stars, brilliant, distant dots in a universe of worlds that were unreachable. Like him, when she’d needed him most.
“I gave up my baby to your sister because she was your family, and at least you would know our child. And love her for me. But I still wished... I ached for you to write to me that next Christmas. As you said you would, if your feeling for me hadn’t changed.”
She turned to fling her own anguish at him, her heart throbbing with all the painful doubts and the painful decisions she’d had to make. “I didn’t believe you’d forgotten me. But I didn’t know if you wanted me. He’ll write if he still does, I told myself. He’ll write. And then I can write back and tell him about our baby. He’ll come home and make everything right if he truly wants me. We’ll be together.”
Her passionate outburst hung in the air between them, the understanding he’d demanded weaving its stinging tentacles of truth, inescapable, devastating in their power to set his mind straight.
“But I didn’t write,” he said hollowly.
“No. And then I realised I really had given my baby up.” The dead despair of that moment hollowed out her voice. “And there was no turning back the clock.”
He said nothing.
An ironic laugh broke from her throat. “It haunted me so much, when your two years at Harvard were up, I went back to your sister’s place, determined to see you. Just to see... had you forgotten or didn’t you want me?”
“They’d moved,” he answered for her. “As soon as Denise got the baby, they bought a new home.”
Meredith’s mouth twisted. “For all I knew she’d told you everything anyway. I was only hurting myself, not letting go.” She shrugged. “At least she kept her word, sending me the photographs.”
BOOK: Merry Christmas (Mills & Boon Vintage 90s Modern)
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