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Authors: Emma Darcy

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BOOK: Merry Christmas (Mills & Boon Vintage 90s Modern)
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Strange to think she would never have become a florist but for being pregnant so young, having to drop out of school and being shuttled out of sight to her stepmother’s sister in Sydney. Ironic how one thing had led to another, the unpaid apprenticeship in her stepaunt’s shop giving her the interest and training to develop a talent she had eventually turned into a successful business.
“Do you share this apartment?” Nick Hamilton asked, tense and ill at ease with the question but asking it nonetheless.
“No,” she replied. “It’s all mine,” she added with a touch of pride, knowing that the home she’d created here proved she was a woman of independent means.
She’d taken her time, selecting what she wanted to live with. The deeply cushioned, squashy leather sofa and chairs were cream so she could dress them up with the multicoloured tapestry cushions she’d stitched over many lonely nights. The wood of the bookshelves and desk was a blond ash, as were the sidetables and her small, four-chair dining suite. The carpet was a dusky pink mushroom.
She’d wanted everything soft and light, uplifting and cosy. It suited her. She fiercely told herself whatever he thought didn’t matter. He’d dropped out of her life thirteen years ago and had no right to walk back into it and be critical of anything.
She pushed his glass of wine across the kitchen counter which was open to the living area. “Your drink.”
“Thank you. You haven’t married?” His eyes were sharply curious and calculating as he came toward her to pick up the wine.
The highly personal inquiry niggled Meredith. He’d spoiled her for any other man and she resented the implication she might have had a free ride on a husband’s income. “No. I didn’t get this place from a man, Mr. Hamilton,” she answered tersely. “I’ve made my own way through a lot of hard work and a bit of luck. Did you achieve whatever you’ve got through a woman?”
In a way he had, his sister protecting him from even knowing about a responsibility he had incurred. He’d been left free to prosper in his chosen career instead of being saddled with a young wife and baby. Denise Graham had not only ensured he had every chance to succeed, she’d kept his child for him, too.
He looked abashed. “I didn’t mean to suggest...”
Resentment over his intrusion in her life now—far too late—brought a surge of impatience with his purpose. “Just why are you checking me out?” she demanded bluntly. “What answers are you looking for?”
He grimaced at her directness. “I guess you could say we’re both faced with a highly delicate situation. I’m trying to ascertain what your attitude might be toward a meeting with Kimberly. Whether it would intrude negatively on the life you have now.”
Her mind reeled at the incredible import of what he was saying. A meeting with her daughter? She’d barely dared to hope for it some time in the future when Kimberly was old enough to be her own person. How could this be when she was only twelve?
“Your sister will allow it?” Her throat had gone so dry her voice was a raw croak. Her eyes clung to his in a torment of doubt.
“My sister and her husband were killed in a car accident a year ago. Just before Christmas,” he stated quietly. “Kimberly has been in my care ever since.”
Shock rolled through her in mind-blowing, heart-wrenching waves. Denise and Colin Graham dead. Since before Christmas last year. And all this time she’d been thinking of them, picturing them going about their lives in their family unit, enjoying all she couldn’t enjoy with their daughter. A year! Her daughter had been without a mother, without her adoptive parents, for a whole year!
“I was appointed her legal guardian,” Nick Hamilton went on, apparently still unaware he was Kimberly’s natural father. His gaze seemed to tunnel into her mind as he added, “I didn’t know about you. Didn’t know there was any contact between you and my sister.”
Meredith closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear his non-knowledge of her. And death could have sealed those secret, intimate links forever. It made her sick to think of it.
“Only today did I get your address from the solicitor.” His voice strained now, strained with all he didn’t know and the fear of the unknown. “He didn’t want to give it to me. He argued that Denise’s death closed the personal connection between the two of you. He advised against my picking it up.”
Fear of the consequences...dear God! The roads that had been travelled to this point! And he was afraid of letting her in to their lives!
“Why did you?” she asked faintly, trying to suppress the bitterness of having no legal rights. Even when the adoptive parents were dead, she couldn’t make a claim on her own child.
“For Kimberly. She wants...”
Meredith lifted her lashes enough to see his grimace. He didn’t like this. Didn’t want it. He’d come against the solicitor’s advice, against his own better judgment. His chest rose and felt as he expelled a long, ragged sigh.
“She wants...her
real
mother...for Christmas,” he finished flatly.
For Christmas.
Only for Christmas.
A limited encounter... just like with her father. Limited...time out of time to cherish...treasure... haunt. The pain of the limitation sucked the blood from her brain. She clutched at the kitchen counter but couldn’t summon the strength to hold on as she slid into dark oblivion.
CHAPTER THREE
N
ICK picked her up from the kitchen floor and cradled her against his chest. A pins and needles sensation attacked his whole body. It wasn’t the effort of carrying her weight. She was not a big woman despite her above-average height. It was the way she seemed to nestle in his arms, her head dropping onto his shoulder as though it belonged there, her long hair flowing across his throat, skeins of silk somehow entangling him with feelings his brain couldn’t compute at all. They didn’t make sense. At least... not a sense he was ready to acknowledge.
It was too crazy... too beyond rational explanation. He hadn’t met her before. He knew he hadn’t. Her eyes being the same as Kimberly’s was not the answer, either. Kimberly was a child. Meredith Palmer was a woman. How did a woman he didn’t know get to walk through his dreams? And to have her materialise in front of him...real flesh and blood...every line of her hauntingly familiar to him... Nick was hopelessly distracted from establishing what he’d come here to do.
He should have approached the salient facts more obliquely, been more sensitive to their impact on her. It was obvious she’d been stressed at not receiving the packet from Denise and his appearance on the scene must have agitated her further despite the reassurance he’d tried to give. Here she was in a dead faint, all because he’d responded without giving enough thought to how it would affect her, and he was still caught up in how she affected him!
Instead of standing in her kitchen like a dumb ox, holding her in his own personal daze, he should be doing something constructive about bringing her back to consciousness. He forced his mind to focus on practicalities.
The sofa in her living room was only a two-seater, not large enough to lay her out comfortably. Bedroom and bathroom had to be nearby. A door stood slightly ajar near one of the bookcases. He carried her to it and manoeuvred her into what proved to be her bedroom.
She was beginning to stir as he lowered her onto the bed, her head rolling restlessly, as though in blind search of something lost. A low moan of longing or some deep inner torment issued from her throat and tugged at his heart. He grasped her hand, his fingers curling tightly around hers, pressing his warmth and strength, wanting to impart she was not alone.
Thinking he should probably get her a glass of water, he glanced around, looking for a door into an ensuite bathroom. And shock hit him again.
The walls were covered with photographs of Kimberly!
Montages of each year of his niece’s life hung in frames, interspersed with blow-ups of what were particularly good shots of her, capturing a highly expressive look that seemed to bring her personality stunningly, vibrantly alive in this room.
It was eerie, seeing Kimberly in such close focus from babyhood onward. Nick had seen most of the photographs before at various times, but never in this kind of concentration. The collection, so overwhelmingly displayed, suddenly seemed to smack of unhealthy obsessiveness.
Kimberly’s plea...
if my real mother wants me
... became an absurd understatement in the face of so much visual evidence of
wanting
. Nick’s head buzzed with a confusion of moral and legal rights. Kimberly was family to him, yet how much more was she to this woman who had given her birth? What if Kimberly’s desire to meet her was capricious? What was he setting in motion here?
The warning given by Hector Burnside, Denise’s old solicitor, started ringing in Nick’s ears.
Leave well enough alone. You don’t know what you might be walking into. It could be dangerous ground.
Maybe he should have heeded the advice of a man who had seen all sides of human nature in his line of work. Nick shook his head over the dilemma he now found himself in. He’d promised Kimberly an answer from her real mother. In choosing to follow that course, he wasn’t sure if he’d stepped into a dream or a nightmare. Either way, it was too late to walk out of it.
CHAPTER FOUR
H
E WAS holding her hand.
The physical link generated a flood of warm feeling that drove away the chilling fear of the unknown and soothed the whirling chaos in her mind. She hadn’t died and moved on to where impossible things were possible. She wasn’t dreaming. Nick Hamilton’s hand pressed solid substance in a world that had shifted too fast for Meredith to retain a grip on it herself.
The initial confusion of finding herself on her bed, with him sitting beside her, quickly cleared as she remembered what had gone before. “I must have fainted,” she croaked in surprise.
Her voice startled him out of the private reverie he’d fallen into. His head jerked around to face her. His eyes had a dazed look. “Yes,” he said, his focus sharpening. “You still look pale. Would you like a drink of water?”
She started to prop herself up on her elbow. The room reeled. She fell back on the pillows, hopelessly dizzy. “Yes, please. It might help.” She closed her eyes, fighting a wave of nausea. “Sorry...”
“My fault.” His weight shifted off the bed. “Be right back.”
A combination of shock with too much wine on an empty stomach, Meredith reasoned, wishing she’d had the sense to eat properly. She didn’t want Nick Hamilton thinking she was sickly and unable to cope with difficult situations. He might think bet ter of her meeting Kimberly for even a short time.
The longing to see her daughter in the flesh rose so strongly, it overrode every other consideration. To actually see her, watch her in action, listen to her, hear how she felt about so many things... it would be worth any amount of heartache.
Fearing that the opening Nick Hamilton had offered might be withdrawn if his impression of her was negative, Meredith swung her legs off the bed and bent her head down to her knees, determined on regaining her equilibrium. By the time he returned with a glass of water, she had steadied enough to drink it.
The weight of liquid helped settle her stomach. As she put the emptied glass on the bedside table, she glanced up to thank him, only to find he wasn’t watching her. He was staring at the photographs on the wall and the grim set to his face did not reflect any pleasure in them.
Her heart sank as she realised what an overwhelming effect the display might have on someone who hadn’t seen it, who didn’t live with it. She didn’t expect others to understand her need for these all too few windows on the life of her lost child and she instinctively recoiled from having that deeply driven maternal need exposed.
“I didn’t invite you in here. I don’t invite anyone in here,” she burst out defensively.
The look he turned on her was so wary it made Meredith feel frantic. Was he in retreat from her? She made a floundering gesture at the photographs.
“I mean all this...it’s private,” she cried, desperate to win a sympathetic hearing. “You probably take Kimberly and everything about her for granted, having her around you all the time. This is the only way I have of seeing my child grow up.”
He shook his head, an appalled expression in his eyes, as though, until this moment, he hadn’t begun to comprehend the immense loss she’d borne since Kimberly’s birth.
“I gave her up because I thought it best for her. That doesn’t mean I love her any less,” Meredith asserted with vehement passion, trying to appeal to his sense of fairness.
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “I had no idea...no appreciation of...” He gestured apologetically. “I beg your pardon for not being more...prepared.”
The father of her child, appearing out of nowhere to suddenly hold out the chance of a reunion—more of a reunion than he knew—how could he have any idea what it meant to her? She ached all over just looking at him, having him near, bringing back the memories of her double grief.
He backed off a step, his face creased in pained concern. “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy by bringing you in here. It was only to help. If you’d prefer to recover alone now...”
Anxiety sank its claws in. Was he seizing an opportunity to escape from a situation he was finding too fraught with emotion? Had she just ruined the one chance she might ever have of meeting her daughter? The last thing she wanted was to drive him away. So much was hanging in the balance. She sought frantically for ways to plead her cause and all she could come up with was to beg a stay of judgment.
“Please don’t go. I won’t collapse on you again.”
An aeon seemed to pass as his eyes bored into hers, searching, sifting, undecided as to what was right or wrong. His tension made hers worse. Every nerve in her body was strung tight, willing him to stay and talk until a more favourable position was reached.
“I’ll wait in the living room,” he said, clearly discomforted by the walls of photographs, the stark evidence of deprived motherhood and the overcharged atmosphere that had risen from its confrontation.
An intense wash of relief brought a hot flow of blood to Meredith’s cheeks. Hopefully it gave them a healthy-looking flush. “I’ll come with you,” she rushed out, afraid to let him out of her sight in case he had second thoughts. “It’s food I need. Once I’ve had something solid to eat I’m sure I’ll feel much better.”
She quickly pushed up from the bed, swaying slightly before finding her balance. He was beside her in an instant, ready to lend his support. Her eyes pleaded for belief as she assured him, “I’m not usually fragile.”
“Take my arm.” It was a firm command. “I’ll see you seated on your sofa. Then you can tell me what to do in your kitchen to assemble a meal for you.”
“I can manage,” she protested, intent on proving it.
“So can I,” he insisted, intent on taking control.
The need to show independent strength suddenly lost its importance. If she kept him busy with her now, she gained the time to impress him as a responsible person whom he could trust to act both sensibly and sensitively when it came to a meeting with Kimberly. It had to come to that. Had to.
She hooked her arm around his and felt his muscles harden as her hand slid over them. It made her feel skittish, uncertain if he was inwardly recoiling from her touch or reacting to it in the way he once had. Though it was madness to think of that now when so much else was at stake. Besides, the quickly sparked desires of youth hardly fitted into this picture.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t help being extremely aware of him as he matched his steps to hers in their walk to the living room. Her upper arm was tucked against the warm wall of his chest and their hips and thighs brushed, arousing little shivers of sensitivity that sharply reminded her of how intimate they had once been.
Breathing in his aftershave lotion—surely the same tangy scent he’d used then—tickled her nostrils, evoking the memory of how he’d brought all her senses incredibly alive that summer. Every smell had seemed exotic, every colour brighter, every sound magnified, every taste heightened, every touch...Meredith fiercely clamped down on that line of thought. It was stirring feelings she couldn’t afford.
It was a relief when Nick Hamilton deposited her on the sofa and dropped all physical contact with her. He took off so briskly for the kitchen, Meredith suspected it was a relief for him to have some distance between them, too, though his reasons were undoubtedly different. Getting on with the business he’d come about would be very much on his mind.
She watched him taking inventory of the contents of her refrigerator and called, “A sandwich will do. There’s bread in the fridge.”
Decisive and efficient in his movements, he set out a loaf of bread, butter, a packet of sliced cheese and tomatoes, then switched on the griller at the top of the stove. He was certainly kitchen trained, Meredith thought, and wondered how much he fended for himself. Was he married?
However pertinent the question was in the circumstances, Meredith shied away from it, reluctant to picture him with a wife. Then she remembered the misery of trying to get along with her stepmother and wondered if Kimberly was suffering the same problem, having lost the parents who had brought her up and then been landed on a woman who had no deep caring for her, a woman who was only there because she was attached to Nick Hamilton.
Meredith knew from first-hand experience how unwanted a girl of Kimberly’s age could feel, given such a situation. And it stood to reason that something had to be prompting the desire to meet her real mother. It also stood to reason that a man as attractive as Nick Hamilton would not be without a woman.
Another question sprang to mind. How did Kimberly know about her? Surely it would be uncharacteristic of Denise Graham to reveal anything about Kimberly’s
real
mother to the child she was bringing up as her own daughter. It struck Meredith that Nick Hamilton might have more to answer for than he’d like to admit.
“How long has Kimberly known she was adopted?” she asked, feeling the knowledge had to have come after the death of her adoptive parents.
“She found out a week before the car accident that killed Denise and Colin,” he answered flatly.
Found out?
Dear Heaven! Had the resulting upset contributed to the accident?
Nick Hamilton’s dark gaze lifted briefly from the bread he was buttering, a heavy sadness dulling his eyes. “Apparently Denise was sorting through photographs and discussing with Colin which ones to send to you. Kimberly overheard them and pieced the information together.” He frowned. “She has a bad habit of eavesdropping. Perhaps being an only child...no sibling to talk to...”
“Did she confront them with it?” Meredith broke in anxiously, imagining the guilt her daughter might feel if there’d been arguments.
He shook his head. “She wanted to think about it. Work out what it meant to her.”
A lot of inner turmoil there, Meredith thought, though it was a relief to learn there had been no open conflict for which Kimberly might blame herself.
“Then her world came crashing down,” Nick Hamilton continued, “and there were so many changes for her to take on, I guess she clung to what was safely familiar rather than pursue what probably seemed like an intangible dream.”
“So
you
didn’t talk to her about it?”
“I thought it better not to. She had enough trauma losing one set of parents, let alone two.” He grimaced. “She kept it to herself until a few days ago.”
Holding such a big secret all that time...holding it in reserve, Meredith thought, and wondered how often her daughter might have fantasised about another life as she tried living with the man who had been legally appointed her guardian, a man who was only an uncle by adoption. Or did Kimberly instinctively feel more closely bonded to him...her
real
father?
Was there an innate tie of blood, whether it was known or not? Would her daughter feel she was a total stranger or would there be an instant, intuitive link between them? The need to know pounded through Meredith, bringing a wave of excitement, of almost unbearable anticipation. It was difficult to contain it but she sternly told herself she had to while a meeting was still not settled.
She watched the only man she had ever loved place the sandwiches he was intent on toasting under the griller and tried to imagine what he was feeling about Kimberly’s request, coming virtually out of nowhere. He would not have been
prepared
for that, either. But Nick Hamilton was no dodger of delicate issues. He faced them and dealt with them according to his sense of rightness. It was that very quality of character Meredith had implicitly believed in when she had found herself pregnant.
“You think a rich college boy is going to stand by you?” her stepmother had mocked. “He skipped out fast enough when I told him your age. A guy like that doesn’t want to be shackled to a sixteen-year-old country girl who was no more than a Christmas vacation fling to him.”
He hadn’t
skipped out
. Meredith hadn’t thought it then and she didn’t think it now.
It had shocked him when her stepmother had confronted him with how young she was. Meredith had let him assume she was older, knowing she could easily pass for nineteen and desperately wanting to go with him wherever he wanted to take her. She’d argued to herself that love had nothing to do with age.
But Nick had faced the issues squarely and laid them out to her. She still had two more years of school plus tertiary education after that, if she wanted it. There was so much more for her to do and experience and think about before tying herself to anyone or anything. She should be free to make the choices that would best suit her. The love they felt for each other could be recaptured when she was older. He didn’t feel right about taking up her life while she still had so much in front of her.
He had given her his address and suggested they send each other Christmas cards if they both wanted to keep the connection going. No commitment. But there was no harm in maintaining a friendly communication once a year. When she was twenty-one...
“Isn’t eighteen old enough?” she’d protested, devastated at the thought of waiting so many years before they could be lovers again.
“It wouldn’t be fair,” he’d answered ruefully. “Any more than it would be fair of me to stay on here, Merry. The more deeply we get involved the harder it will be to part.”
BOOK: Merry Christmas (Mills & Boon Vintage 90s Modern)
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