The Most Magical Gift of All (9 page)

‘Hey, hey, what's wrong?' He picked her up and she immediately cuddled into his shoulder, her small chest heaving. Confused as to what had caused this uncharacteristic outburst, he glanced over her head to Sophie, seeking an answer.

She stood on unsteady legs, her eyes red-rimmed and her face white. ‘Sophie?'

She shook her head and brushed past him. ‘I need some air.'

Before he could speak, she'd disappeared into the garden despite the late-afternoon heat.

Two women in tears. He ran a hand through his hair, his anticipation of a quiet night at home shot to pieces. What on earth was going on?

Imogen gave a giant, shuddering sniff and rubbed her face against his shirt, her arms clinging fast around his neck. She looked utterly exhausted.

The heat was tough on everyone, especially kids, and with the excitement of Christmas around the corner it made for tired and grumpy children. ‘Did you have a nap after kinder today?'

She shook her head and yawned so wide he thought she'd dislocate her jaw. ‘I done swimming.' Her head stayed firm on his shoulder.

‘Ah.' Heat, no nap and swimming; no wonder the kid had hit the wall and was inconsolable. She was asleep
on her feet. There was no point even trying to give her dinner, she just needed her bed. He took her to the bathroom, wiped her face with a cool cloth and then tucked her into bed with the ceiling fan on low. She was asleep before he'd left the room.

He flicked off the light and closed the door. One emotional girl sorted out and one to go. He wasn't certain Sophie's problem was going to be quite so easy to fix.

J
ACK
walked into the living area and saw the Christmas train on the top shelf of the sideboard. Imogen loved the train, but the music drove him mad so he always insisted she turn the sound off when she played with it. He picked up the engine, intending to put it back on the tracks, but something made him return it to the shelf, feeling it must be there for a reason.

Catching sight of Sophie dangling her feet in the pool, he crossed to the kitchen, made a jug of icy lemon, lime and bitters and took it out to the pool along with some tzatziki dip and biscuits. Sophie was now standing in the pool, her back to him. After setting the tray on a low table between two chairs, he grabbed Sophie's towel, walked to the end of the pool, watched and waited.

With her left arm high above her head and a plastic bag on her hand, Sophie was walking back and forth across the pool, occasionally ducking her head under to get some relief from the heat. When she finally stopped walking laps, she rose out of the water like a nymph. Water cascaded across her breasts, sluiced down her body, dividing around her belly-button ring, and then speared under the skimpy triangle of material that pretended to be her bikini bottoms. God, she was beautiful.
He wanted to pull her into his arms, feel her body mould to his and kiss her until they both gasped for air.

He handed her the towel instead. ‘Feeling better?'

‘Cooler.' She accepted the towel, dried her dripping hair which immediately sprang back into tight curls and then removed the plastic bag from her hand before wrapping the towel around her waist. Her shuttered eyes gave nothing away. ‘Is Imogen all right?'

‘She's fine and fast asleep.'

She bit her lip. ‘Thanks.'

‘No problem.' He ushered her to the chairs and they sat with the drinks table between them. Handing her a drink, he asked, ‘Tough day?'

She sighed. ‘I'm rubbish with children.'

Her words stunned him and he shook his head in instant denial. ‘I've noticed you often sound like Mary Poppins when you talk to them, but the children in that book loved her.'

She traced a line in the condensation of her glass. ‘Well, children don't love me.'

He frowned, wondering why she'd say this. Surely she didn't think Imogen's meltdown was personal? Yesterday Imogen had sat on Sophie's lap and happily held her hand; although Im was needy for love, she was also street smart and would avoid any adult that made her feel uncomfortable. ‘Im's a pretty good judge of character, and she likes you.'

Sophie took a long gulp of her drink, her hands trembling slightly. ‘Not today. She threw a tantrum of epic proportions.'

‘Immy threw a tantrum?' Joy followed the surprise and he leaned back in his chair, wanting to cheer with delight. ‘That's fantastic.'

Sophie's head snapped around so fast her swinging
curls released a spray of water. ‘How can that possibly be a good thing?'

The sadness he always felt for Imogen rose into a rueful smile. ‘Kylie hasn't given Im a very stable childhood.'

Sympathy hovered around her mouth. ‘I gathered that when she told me to be good yesterday or you'd leave.'

His heart cramped at the memory. ‘That's the tragedy for Imogen. She's so desperate for love and scared she'll be left, that she's normally unrealistically good. She's never a problem to look after because she's unfailingly well-behaved, but that's not normal. Kids can be right shockers, so the fact Im threw a tantrum means she's feeling safe or she's testing the waters to see if it drives us away. Either way, it's a healthy sign.'

Sophie gave a brittle laugh as her hand moved to a patch of red-raised skin on her inner elbow that looked like eczema. ‘I'm glad I could be the one to trigger such an emotional breakthrough for her.'

He was pleased to hear her attempt at humour and was glad she could now see the situation in perspective, although the memory of her red-rimmed eyes and tight face lingered, generating questions. ‘Believe me, she doesn't hate you. So what actually happened?'

She fiddled with the biscuits and dip before she finally spoke. ‘I picked her up from kinder, we came home, had lunch and spent the afternoon working our way though your list, and we'd almost done everything—'

‘My list?'

She nodded. ‘The one you left for the day's activities.'

She'd used the list
. Stunned disbelief spun through him. Normally she rolled her eyes and binned his Post-it
notes, saying, ‘You don't have to organise everything, Jack, why not live for the moment?'

‘Sophie, that list was suggestions for across the week. Don't tell me you did everything on it today?'

Her tension doubled and her voice took on a sharp tone. ‘Everything except the bath.'

Laughter bubbled up and he threw his head back and gave into the delicious irony. ‘I'm surprised you're not as exhausted as Imogen.'

Her face, which had pinked up, paled again and her eyes flashed with anger and something else he couldn't pin down. ‘I did my best, Jack. Not everyone is a natural with children like you are.'

Her agitation rocked into him, killing his laughter. What was really going on here? Who was a natural? He'd spent his life surrounded by kids and he'd learned a few tricks along the way. ‘Believe me, there are some kids on some occasions that I'd cheerfully strangle—like young Lochie the day we met.'

He'd expected her to smile at the memory of their meeting but she didn't. Instead her fingers curled tightly around the edge of the towel and every part of her looked ready to flee.

I'm rubbish with children.
Why would she even think like that? So she was a bit tense around kids, but that probably came from a lack of experience more than anything else, and perhaps she hadn't grown up with siblings.
The woman's worked in war zones but a healthy tantrum reduces her to tears. That's not normal.

His brain went into overdrive trying to patch together all the pieces of the puzzle.
Imogen's your job. Children don't like me.
He suddenly remembered the train on the sideboard, neatly out of reach of the child. ‘So I'm guessing that Immy spat the dummy when you confiscated
the train because she was being difficult. Sounds like standard-parenting 101, and exactly what I would have done.'

‘Really?' She stared at him, her eyes wide with astonishment, and it was as if she wanted to believe him but couldn't.

‘Really. Imogen's tantrum was induced by tiredness and if it hadn't been the train it would have been something else. So that's Imogen's meltdown easily explained.' He leaned forward, touching her arm. ‘But what brought on yours?'

Bile scalded Sophie's throat which instantly tightened as Jack's question speared straight through her heart. Her body welcomed his touch on her arm but her head screamed,
retreat.

His eyes hooked hers, flickering with shards of blue and violet, shards of concern and care, and a determination to get an answer from her.

She gulped and spoke. ‘I was tired too.'

His black brows rose in a disbelieving arch. ‘You don't look tired. If anything you look totally gorgeous.' The banked desire that always simmered at the back of his eyes flared and then faded as concern returned—the concern she never wanted to see because it ate at her resolve only to think of Jack as a beautiful sex-object.

‘Something really upset you, and I want to help so it doesn't happen again.'

She slipped her arm away from his touch. ‘You can't wipe December from the calendar, Jack, so there's not much you can do.'

‘I can listen.'

His quiet words made her ache. Pushing the straw in her glass up and down, she stared at the clinking ice. ‘I'm English. We don't talk about emotions.'

He laughed. ‘Well, I'm a man, and we don't talk much about them either.' His face sobered. ‘But sometimes we have to, Sophie. I've seen how you flinch at loud noises, an understandable legacy from where you've been working. Did that noisy train trigger something?'

Red-hot pain rocked her.
How did he know?
It shocked her into nodding and pushed words over her lips. ‘The Christmas music.'

‘The reason you don't do Christmas?'

‘Yes.' She sucked in a breath, knowing she'd gone past the point of no return. ‘My brother vanished at Christmas when he was eleven and we never saw him again.' Steeling herself for his shocked and horrified expression, which would be followed by useless but polite platitudes, she sat stiffly and waited.

Jack slid his palm over hers, his tanned fingers interlacing with her white ones, the touch gentle but full of empathy. ‘I can't imagine a family surviving something like that and making it out in one piece.'

His understanding acted like a release valve and her story came tumbling out. ‘We didn't. My father was in the air force, and we'd moved every year or so, but my mother refused to leave the house we'd been living in when Chris disappeared. It became her shrine to his memory. If we could pretend for most of the year that a part of her hadn't died when Chris disappeared, we had no hope at Christmas. The third Christmas after he vanished Mum had a psychotic episode, and Dad had the horrendous task of putting his wife into care so he could try and save the rest of us.'

‘That would have to be one of the hardest things a man could do.' Compassion wove through his words. ‘How many other siblings do you have?

She thought of her sisters. ‘We're three girls and all
of us are flung out across the world. I'm the eldest, then there's Amelia, who's a pilot in the air force just like Dad. She's currently based in Germany and my youngest sister, Minty, is nineteen and reading literature at Oxford.'

His wondrous smile washed over her. ‘A talented group of women.'

‘Thanks.' The cosy warmth that rolled through her was disproportionate to the compliment and she tried to shake it away, but it stuck to her ribs. ‘Dad was a stickler for education, and when Mum was so sick Emmy and I clung to school as the one thing in our lives that was dependable and unchanging.'

‘Minty must have been very young when all this happened.'

‘She was four when Dad became a sole parent, and I was fourteen.'

His handsome face saw too much. ‘A lot can be expected of the eldest child.'

The memories of raising Minty flooded back. ‘Dad did his best but there was no other way. We'd lost our brother and our mother, but we had to honour their lives by surviving and filling our lives with achievements. For three years I went to classes, cared for my sisters and somehow managed to keep up with my school work.'

‘That's tough.'

She didn't want his sympathy and she tugged her hand out of his. ‘It was probably a really good thing, because it taught me that I wasn't cut out to be a mother.'

Shock crossed his face. ‘Cut yourself some slack, Sophie. You were a kid raising a kid. Parenting is the hardest job an adult ever faces, and even then not everyone manages it.'

She knew he was thinking of Imogen's mother but she
didn't want his understanding or to hear his philosophy on parenting. ‘Amelia was fourteen when I went to university and she did a much better job with Minty than I'd done at the same age.'

Two deep lines carved into his forehead. ‘Have you ever considered the fact that Minty was seven when Amelia took over? That by then Minty was in the concrete stage of development? That's the easiest time for parenting. It's the calm before the puberty storm.' His intelligent eyes swept her face. ‘Who looked after her for the tricky adolescent years?'

‘My father.'

‘How'd he do?'

She thought about her father's emails during that time, about his despair at Minty's constant rebellious partying, how he hadn't been able to understand why she was socialising with a wild crowd that she ran rings around intellectually. All Sophie had been able to do was be thankful she didn't have to deal with it. It had taken a bad car accident to jolt her sister into maturity. The mostly hard-working university student of today with a flair for fun was a far cry from the traumatised girl of fourteen.

Jack filled the silence. ‘He found it damn hard, right? And he was what, fifty-something?'

His words fell like mortar fire and she wanted to hide her head under her arms and duck for cover. But anger kept her in the chair. ‘What is it about men who presume to tell me what I should and shouldn't want?' The moment she'd spoken, she wanted to grab back the words but it was too late. She saw the second that Jack's quick mind made the connection.

‘Was this the reason you and Simon broke up?'

There was no point denying it. ‘Yes. He wanted children and I didn't.'

He spoke softly. ‘That must have been tough on both of you.'

Couples who love each other make a family, Sophie.
She forced Simon's cajoling voice out of her head and, with a jaw so tight it ached, she forced out her words. ‘The relationship had run its course, and I don't have a problem with my decision not to have children.'

He raised his brows. ‘Even if it's based on an illogical rationale?'

‘Don't you dare tell me it's illogical. You weren't there living the mess that was half my childhood. At least I have enough insight to know where my strengths lie, and I'm not going to bring a child into the world that I'd only end up traumatising.'

He shrugged as if he disagreed but then his fingers, cool and soothing, traced the patch of eczema on her arm. ‘I think it's a shame you think this way, because if you just relaxed a bit you'd be great with children.'

She wanted to let his words roll off her because she knew herself a hell of a lot better than a man who'd only known her just over a week. She knew she didn't want children. It had to be true because she'd hurt Simon so badly by not loving him and not wanting his child. But Jack's words lingered, settling over her like a fine mist and seeping into her.