‘MAKE SURE YOU take them every day—all right, Mr Thomas?’
Lucas’s patient screwed up his face as if he’d just spoken to him in Martian.
‘He will. My poor man can’t hear without his hearing aids, and he didn’t want to wear them—what with the infection and all.’ Mrs Thomas gave her husband’s leg a pat and then shouted, ‘You’ll be taking your medicine every day!’ She tapped the prescription Lucas had just handed them. ‘Right up until Christmas Eve.’ She turned to Lucas; her face suddenly stricken. ‘Will that mean no Christmas cheer for him?’
Lucas made a remorseful expression. ‘I’m afraid not. Not with antibiotics.’
‘Oh, well!’ Mrs Thomas turned to her husband again, turning her speaking volume up to eleven. ‘It’s a good thing we went out to Mistletoe Cottage for the mince pies and mulled wine—isn’t it, love?’
Lucas rubbed his chin...hastily shaven and with a couple of nicks. Something he hadn’t done in a long time. He didn’t remember seeing the couple there. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise to him. He’d only had eyes for Kiara.
The thought stung as an image of her face when she’d seen him this morning, a wretched mix of fear and sorrow, flashed across his mind’s eye.
Mr Thomas grinned. ‘It certainly is.’ He patted his tummy. ‘Those were the finest mince pies I’ve had in yonks. And imagine...eating them for charity!’ A look of panic zapped across his face. ‘I mean, they were the finest apart from yours, love. Obviously.’ He leant across and gave his wife’s sweet, dried apple face a kiss.
Mrs Thomas’s features softened. She put her palm on her husband’s cheek and then gave it a gentle pat before turning to Lucas with a happy smile. ‘Forty-seven years of marriage and I’ve finally got him trained.’
Something in Lucas’s heart twisted, unleashing the raft of feelings he’d been trying to keep at bay all day. The reaction went well beyond the parameters of witnessing a lovely moment. It was a combination of loss and hope. Loss that he’d never share that sort of exchange with Lily, and hope that—
He cut the thought off. He’d been an absolute idiot this morning. He’d seen Kiara plain as day in Reception, and when he’d had a chance to extend some sort of olive branch to her he’d stuck his foot in it.
Christmas isn’t really my thing.
What had he been thinking?
No prizes for answering that. He hadn’t. From the moment he’d woken up he’d stopped thinking, and his body had gone into the mode it had been in during Lily’s final months: simply reacting.
Holding Kiara in his arms, smelling the soft perfume of her shampoo as her hair tickled his chin and his chest, feeling safe and warm and part of something bigger than himself—all that had awakened something in him he’d thought he’d left in the past. Happiness.
He’d felt happiness. Pure, wonderful, undiluted happiness. It hadn’t been frantic, or wild, or just beyond his reach. It had been right there in his arms and it had smelt of cloves and cinnamon sugar and mint. And its name had been Kiara.
As soon as the sensation had registered, the guilt had poured in.
He’d never imagined himself feeling that way again. At peace with someone. As if he were part of a team. A future. And yet there he’d been, less than three years after his wife had died in his arms, holding another woman and never wanting the moment to come to an end.
The realisation had savaged him.
It was nothing to do with Kiara. Well... It was everything to do with Kiara. Or, more accurately, with his reaction to her. His feelings for her. The fact he’d wanted nothing more than to make love to her last night and had done so without a thought for how he might feel in the morning.
She was entirely faultless in this. It was one hundred percent him, and the fact that he’d never imagined caring for someone in that way ever again. He’d not known what to do with the new raft of feelings. Happiness. Contentment. Actual joy.
Feelings that had slammed up against his past so hard and fast he’d barely been able to breathe.
He’d had everything he’d ever wanted with Lily, and then she’d been taken away from him. In such a cruel way.
Harry hadn’t been old enough to know the loss, but now he was. He adored Kiara. Loved everything about her. When he was with her, he glowed with happiness. He couldn’t risk his son experiencing the level of loss Lucas had when he’d lost Lily. Not that Kiara was sick—but you simply didn’t know, did you? Anything could happen. Sickness. Car crashes. Freak weather events...
His mind had run wild with the thousands of reasons a man could end up standing at a graveside with nothing but a pathetic flower in his hand. A paltry show of feeling for a love that had been his life force. He didn’t know how to love someone without loving them completely. With his whole being. Body. Heart. Soul.
Burying Lily had been like burying a part of himself. Even considering the possibility of experiencing that level of loss again was driving large wedges of ice straight into his heart. Fear. Panic. Confusion. Pain. Each one darker than the next to the point where he’d been completely and utterly panicked, convincing himself that his future had already been laid out for him.
He’d been so certain that his future was with Lily and life had showed him otherwise. He didn’t know anything. He was destined to be alone. The perfection he’d shared with Kiara was not his to take. Not with what she’d already been through with her ex. What he’d been through with his wife. He was in no place to make promises for the future when he knew first-hand that the future was not in his control.
So he’d left. Convinced himself that he was doing it for Harry. That if, perchance, his son had found him with Kiara it would have confused things. And now here he was, face to face with a couple who, by the look of things, had enjoyed forty-seven years of marriage and were still smiling.
‘What’s your secret?’ Lucas asked.
‘For a good mince pie?’ Mrs Thomas asked.
‘What’s that?’ Mr Thomas leant in closer to his wife.
‘He wants to know what my secret for a good mince pie is, Harold!’
They shared a look, then began to cackle. Low at first. Then building to a high fever-pitch of giggles.
‘She buys them, lad! She buys ’em down the shops and pretends they’re home-made.’
They laughed until they wiped tears away, and once again Lucas was struck by how wonderful their companionship seemed. Multifaceted, and at its very core a deep well of love.
‘I meant the secret of your marriage,’ Lucas persisted. He’d take any advice he could get. Living his life half in the past and half in the present wasn’t working. He had to find a way to go forward—only he didn’t know how. ‘What’s the secret to staying so happily married?’
‘Agree with everything she says,’ Mr Thomas said, still laughing, and then putting on a placating voice. ‘Yes, dear. That’s right, dear. Anything you say, dear...’
Mrs Thomas swatted at him. ‘If only it was that easy.’ She leant forward and said conspiratorially, ‘You’ll not even come close to guessing the tricks I’ll have to play to get him through these antibiotics. He’s stubborn as a mule, he is. I had to promise him a steak pie tonight just to get him to come and see you.’
‘That’s just because I wanted steak pie!’ Mr Thomas gave his wife a little tickle, then sobered as he turned back to Lucas. ‘The real reason I came is because I want to make sure I’m around as long as she is. Drives me bonkers with all her energy—but, by God, it doesn’t half keep me going. Wouldn’t have lived a day of my life without this woman. Worth her weight in gold, she is.’ He leant forward and in a stage-whisper said, ‘The real secret is making it clear to everyone around you that you won the lottery the day she agreed to marry you.’
The look Mrs Thomas gave her husband was so tender and full of love it nearly broke Lucas in two. He’d thought he was on track to have what they shared years back, when he’d asked Lily to marry him, but life had moved the goal posts for all of them. Lily, Harry and himself. And now, because of his poor behaviour this morning, for Kiara.
He had destroyed the very beginnings of something without even giving it a chance.
He had no idea how to shift the course of his own path to cross with Kiara’s. Perhaps that had been the problem. Their fleeting connection had been a lesson to him to exercise more caution. Show more care. And never, ever again to hurt a woman who’d been so open, sharing with him her deepest humiliation only to feel it again by his own hand.
He owed her an apology. But words weren’t going to be enough. The old saying was right. Actions did speak louder than words. And he had to make sure he was matching whatever apology he made to his intentions.
Until he knew what those were he was right back where he’d begun. Caught between his past and the present, not knowing which way to turn.
When Kiara opened the door for her next patient, Catrina, she was shocked to see Lucas, chatting away with her.
Not so much because it was weird for a GP to be speaking to a patient, but because it was weird for him to be outside a door he knew she’d be opening when he’d made it crystal-clear yesterday that he wanted nothing more to do with her.
She ran her thumb along the jagged remains of her festively decorated fingernails...all nibbled down yesterday.
He hadn’t been that awful.
Despite her nerve-endings still burning like a bee sting, she had to concede that he hadn’t cold-shouldered her or anything. He obviously just didn’t want what had happened between them to happen again. Or, if he did, he wanted it to be between them. A secret. And if there was one thing she’d promised herself when she left London it was that she’d never again let someone treat her the way her ex had. As a secret.
‘Hey, Kiara.’ His grey eyes met hers. ‘All right?’
‘Fine, thanks,’ she chirped, although the subtext was clear: No thanks to you. ‘Catrina! So lovely to see you. Gosh... The twenty-eight-week appointment! If I didn’t have it right here in black and white, I wouldn’t have believed it from the size of you.’
‘I know!’ Catrina ran a hand over her neat bump then grinned, ‘But look at me from the side!’ She turned and jutted out her belly—which, to be fair, did look bigger from that angle.
Lucas hadn’t moved a centimetre during this exchange and Kiara could feel him watching her. Was he inspecting her to see how she really was? Well, tough.
‘Excellent.’ She flicked her eyes to his and then to her patient’s. ‘Shall we get you out of the corridor and talk privately?’
It would be obvious that she didn’t want him there, but she couldn’t help it. Her response to Lucas was visceral. She wanted to touch him. Smell him. Taste him again. But wanting all those things rose like bile in her throat as she remembered his expression when he’d first laid eyes on her the morning after they’d had sex.
It might have been subconscious, but she’d seen the way he’d pulled Harry just that little bit closer to him, hunched his shoulders that extra centimetre lower... Small but unmistakeable visual cues that had told her he thought he’d made a mistake. That moment had shot her straight back to the day she’d cheerfully answered her phone and listened with dawning understanding as an unfamiliar female voice had informed her that her ‘boyfriend’ had a wife and children.
She’d never felt more humiliated and ashamed.
And that doubled the pain. Because she knew in her heart that Lucas wasn’t anything like her ex.
Peter had been a self-serving, duplicitous married man with a God complex.
Lucas was a widower with the kindest, most gentle spirit. A protective father who’d taken his very first steps into having a relationship. Not to mention the best kisser she’d ever met.
She squashed the physical response that came with those memories and forced herself to be practical.
Deep down, she knew he wasn’t the sort of man to go around kissing people willy-nilly. Or to blank them the next day. They’d had a connection. He’d acted on it. Then he’d realised he’d made a mistake.
Perhaps the simplest explanation as to how they’d ended up in bed the other night was that they’d both had too heavy a dose of Christmas magic. But that somehow made it hurt that much more. Being someone’s mistake.
Catrina, who was standing and waiting to go into the room, but couldn’t because Kiara still hadn’t moved, gave her an inquisitive look. ‘Everything all right?’
Kiara popped on a chirpy smile she knew didn’t reach her eyes. With a level of defiance she knew would travel all the way to the tall, dark and handsome GP whose eyes were glued to her, she said, ‘Fine. Never been better. Sorry... I should be asking you if you’re all right. Okay, then...away we go.’
Kiara stood to one side to let Catrina enter the room and, despite trying not to, looked at Lucas as she pulled the door shut.
There was something in those grey eyes of his she couldn’t read. Remorse? An apology? She didn’t know. Whatever it was, she didn’t want it anywhere near her. She couldn’t go down that road again. No matter how much of her heart she’d already lost to him. She’d simply have to soldier on until she grew yet more scar tissue.
And with a simple click of the door she promised herself that that would be that.
But of course it wasn’t.
A few hours later she was on the phone to both of her parents, in a video call so they could witness her ugly crying in High Definition. She told them everything. About Lucas and Harry and how she’d fallen for them both. About how much she’d enjoyed doing all the festive events with them. About how things had gone further with Lucas but that it had obviously been a step too far for him. Whether it was because he was a widower or because she just hadn’t been a good fit, she didn’t know, but it had brought up all sorts of feelings and memories, and she’d thought she should tell them everything.
They sat silently, compassionately, and listened as she told them about Peter. About how he’d courted her. Wined and dined her straight into her own bed. Occasionally a hotel bed. But never his. Until, three years later, she’d found out why.
Her parents were shocked, but not disappointed in her as she’d expected. They comforted her, and called him a scoundrel and a rake and a couple of other words she hadn’t realised her parents knew, and eventually her tears began to dry.
‘Would you like to come home for Christmas, love?’ her mum asked.
She had to admit she was tempted. To have hot water bottles magically appear in her childhood bed each night. To have that wonderful mish-mash of Indian cuisine from her mother’s childhood and English from her father’s on the Christmas dinner table after hours of laughter and fun in the family kitchen. Board games. Sentimental films.
But the idea of leaving her cottage—her new home—made her feel worse. As if ‘The Incident’ with Lucas, as she was now calling it, was driving her out of the new life she’d carved out for herself here in Carey Cove. Leaving, she realised, would be the worst thing she could do.
‘I think I’ll stay here,’ she said.
‘We can always come down to you, you know.’
Her spirits brightened at that. And without her having to say a word, her parents began to plan. Her father pulled a notebook on to the kitchen table as her mother rattled off a long list of things they mustn’t forget to bring.
Before she knew it, Kiara was laughing. ‘They have shops here in Cornwall, you know, Mum.’
Her mother feigned shock, then laughed as well. ‘You know, love, we’re more than happy to come. We want to come. But if you happen to chat to your young man and...you know...decide you’d like to celebrate Christmas in a different way, we’re happy to go with whatever decision you make.’
Kiara scrunched her nose, feeling the sting of tears surfacing again. ‘Thanks, Mum. But I think it’ll be just us Baxters opening presents around the Christmas tree this year.’
They chatted a bit more, then said their goodbyes. Wanting to recapture a bit of the Christmas magic she’d lost over the past twenty-four hours, she went and got her duvet and made a little nest for herself on the sofa. She put on a Christmas film—the kind where brand-new work colleagues turned out to be princes from far-off kingdoms—and snuggled in for the evening.
A bit of fiction never hurt a girl. Especially at this time of year.
‘I can’t get any of the candy canes to stick!’ Harry dropped the red and white striped sweets onto the table and folded his arms across his chest in a disgruntled huff.
‘Come on, Harry. You said you wanted to decorate a gingerbread house.’
Lucas picked up a candy cane, squirted some of the white icing onto it, as the woman leading the workshop had instructed, and then, lacking the will even to try, ate it in one go.
‘Can I have one?’ Harry said, his lower lip beginning to tremble.
‘Sure.’ Lucas took another candy cane out of its protective wrapping and handed it to him.
‘No! With icing on it, like you had!’
Lucas didn’t fight it. He did as his son instructed and together they sat, side by side, amidst tables full of happy families merrily constructing gingerbread houses out of every sweetie known to mankind.
Lucas watched as Harry chomped and then swallowed his minty treat without so much as a glimmer of a smile. It wasn’t top parenting. It wasn’t even top adulting. Lucas knew he sounded as dispirited as his son.
Harry looked up at him, his big grey eyes a reflection of his own, his blond curls an echo of his mother’s. ‘I thought Kiara was going to be here.’
Lucas had too. And to be honest he was doing a terrible job of keeping up his part of the bargain: playing along. ‘C’mon, son. She can’t be with us for all our outings.’
‘Why not?’
There were myriad reasons she couldn’t accompany them absolutely everywhere, but the number one reason she wasn’t here right now was because of the way Lucas had behaved. He’d panicked, and it had come across as cruel. He’d dug a hole for himself he didn’t know how to get out of—because the truth was he didn’t have the answers. He’d never been a widower before. Never fallen for anyone other than Lily...
He closed his eyes and instantly saw Kiara’s expression when she’d found him bundling up a half-asleep Harry and listened to him muttering nonsense about getting him home for uniform and the right socks. It had been ridiculous and she’d known it. Of course Harry had needed those things, but usually a good parent would wait until their child had had a full night’s sleep before taking them out of their girlfriend’s—
The thought caught him up. He’d been thinking a lot of things about Kiara over the past couple of days. Thousands of them. How kind she was. How generous. Thoughtful, beautiful, strong... The list went on. But he’d never once thought of her as his girlfriend.
Was that what she’d become to him? It wasn’t as if he was a Jack the Lad, jumping into bed with every woman who took his fancy. He’d not actually been with or wanted to be with anyone until Kiara had lit up his life—their lives—both literally and figuratively.
‘It’s not as much fun without Kiara,’ Harry said mournfully.
‘You’re right,’ Lucas conceded. ‘It’s not.’
And he’d pulled the plug on the possibility of Kiara being with them ever again. The way he’d treated her, he deserved the icy glances she’d been sending his way. But he simply didn’t know how to come back from that. Not after what she’d been through.
He forced himself to try and look enthused about the unadorned gingerbread house sitting in front of them. ‘But she couldn’t make it today, so what do you say we make the best of it, eh? How about these chocolate buttons? Should we try putting some on the roof?’
Harry looked at the buttons and then up at his father, tears welling in his eyes. ‘Why didn’t we go past Mistletoe Cottage today?’
Another good question with a host of bad answers.
‘I—’ Lucas began, and then, not knowing how to explain to his son how he was feeling torn between his past and a future that felt as if it would betray the past, he began eating the chocolate buttons that were meant to be tiling the gingerbread house neither of them had any interest in.
‘Daddy?’ Harry tugged his father’s arm. ‘I want to see Mistletoe Cottage.’
Lucas’s heart felt punctured by the request, because he knew the subtext. Harry wanted to see Kiara. And so did he. The days weren’t as nice without her. Not as bright. They were certainly bereft of any Christmas spirit. But if they went past the cottage there was every chance they would run into Kiara, and he simply didn’t know how to put into words what he felt.
He dropped a kiss on top of his son’s head and pulled him in for a hug. Sitting here being more miserable wasn’t helping anyone. ‘What do you say we go out to the harbour and see if we can get a glimpse of her house from there?’
It wasn’t the perfect solution, but if they walked out on to the quay Lucas was pretty sure Kiara’s spectacularly decorated house would be shining away, a beacon for all who could see it.
They bundled up, and after making their excuses to the woman hosting the gingerbread-house-making went down to the harbour.
‘Daddy?’ Harry gave Lucas’s hand a tug.
‘Yes, son?’
‘Why did you tell the lady I wasn’t feeling well?’
‘Ah, well...’ Crikey. Now he was going to have to explain about white lies. Tonight was going down as an epic fail in the parenting department.
‘Is it because we don’t feel like smiling when Kiara’s not here?’
The question pierced straight through his heart. He stopped where they were and dropped down so that he was face to face with his son. ‘Hey... Hey, bud. Do you feel that sad without her?’
Harry nodded. ‘And you do, too, Daddy.’
Lucas frowned, humbled by his son’s observation and how accurate it was. He didn’t feel good without Kiara. In fact, he felt downright miserable.
A thought suddenly broke through the fug of gloom he’d been wandering around in for the past couple of days. Was he paying a penance for loss that he had never actually owed? Lily had been clear with him. He wasn’t to hold back from life. Not for her. Or for Harry. More to the point, he was to live life to the fullest for Harry. Living life mired in the past was something she had never wanted for her son. Or for Lucas.
Harry took his index fingers and put each one on the edges of Lucas’s lips, first pushing them up, then down, as he said, ‘When we’re with her we smile, and when we’re not all we want to do is be with her.’
Lucas sat back on his heels and looked at his wise three-year-old. That was pretty much it in a nutshell.
‘Do you—’ he began, and then stopped as a swell of emotion hitched in his throat.
He was about to ask his son a big question, and putting it into words felt as powerful as pulling his own heart out of his chest and asking for advice on how to go forward. How to live their lives.
‘Would it be all right if—’ Again the question caught in his throat.
How did you ask your child if it was all right to date someone who might possibly never want to see him again? Particularly when that little boy had never really known his mother’s love. Two women loved Harry. Only one of them was here, up in that thatched-roofed, ornament-laden, fairy-lit testament to joy.
This was the decision Lily had wanted him to make. Accepting the joy. Loving another woman wasn’t about forgetting his past. It was being grateful for it and then, with care, being willing to open his heart to yet more love. More joy. More happiness.
He no longer battled the emotion bursting in his chest. ‘You know your mummy loved you very much, don’t you?’ he said.
Harry nodded, then pointed at his heart. ‘That’s why she lives here.’
‘Yes. Yes, that’s right. And if I were to ask Kiara to spend a bit more time with us—’
Harry beamed and clapped his hands, ‘You mean a lot more time with us?’
Lucas wiped away a couple tears of his own and said, ‘Hopefully. If Daddy hasn’t mucked it up.’
Harry’s little eyebrows drew together and he asked, ‘Did you tell Kiara we weren’t feeling well, too?’
Lucas had to laugh. ‘Something like that. And now we have to find a way to let her know we’re feeling better and that we’d love to see her again.’
A fresh burst of energy sent an empowering charge through his entire body. He rose and took his son’s hand in his.
‘C’mon, Harry. Daddy’s got an idea. Shall we go and see if we can make it work?’
His son’s cheers were all the encouragement he needed.