Christmas Holiday Husband

by Kris Pearson

  “Strawberry jam? Honey? Marmalade?” he asked.

  “Yes please.”

  “All of them?”

  “Uh...no, of course not. Um...strawberry jam.” She floundered deeper. Lord, if this was the best she could manage discussing breakfast spreads, what hope did she have when pieces of their shared past turned up in conversation?

  Tony took the jam from the shelf and set it down beside her plate. He sat. The intense atmosphere was broken seconds later by the arrival of a mini-whirlwind. His five-year-old twins and a wheezing brown spaniel skidded into the sunny farmhouse kitchen together.

  “I won.”

  “No—I won.”

  “I think Tasha beat you both,” Tony said as he bent to rub the old dog’s ears.

  He spread his arms wide and both daughters launched themselves into his lap. He tightened an arm around each and kissed the tops of their blonde heads. Ellie met his eyes again as she watched the little family tableau.

  “So you’re going to turn my two scatterbrains into brain-boxes?” he asked.

  “I’m hoping so,” she replied, wishing fervently she was the one being hugged. “I thought we might start with a walk around the outside of the house,” she said to the girls, hoping her pounding heart wasn’t making her voice quake. “You can tell me all the things you know and I can find out what I’ll have to teach you.”

  “Ten more minutes,” Tony said, glancing at the kitchen clock and releasing his daughters.

  “When the big hand’s on twelve, and the little hand’s on nine, Daddy.”

  “Right,” he agreed, rising to switch on the electric kettle. “Antonia and Carolyn,” he added to Ellie. “You’ll soon be able to tell them apart.” He made a game of chasing the girls out of the kitchen and turned back to her. “Tea or coffee? You always had coffee in Sydney, if I remember rightly.” One dark eyebrow quirked up with the question.

  “Yes, still coffee,” she said—the memory of her first morning with him slamming back to taunt her. Because of course they’d drifted asleep after making love, and woken as the early sun spilled across them, Tony moving over her to imprison her beneath him yet again.

  “Not too sore?” he’d asked between hopeful kisses. And Ellie, already alight, had murmured she’d be fine, and opened to him. He’d pleasured her first with a knowing finger, circling smoothly, insistently, until she’d relaxed and was ready, panting softly as her climax approached. Then, as she gasped with the pleasure of it, he slid home with a long husky sigh of satisfaction.

  “Much too sore,” she’d teased him a little later, as their bodies glided together in the tumbled bed. He was gentle with her. And afterwards, he’d brought coffee to bed, dipping his forefinger into the mug, anointing her nipples and licking the coffee off again as she giggled.

  “Still black?” he asked.

  “Mmmm?” She was miles away.

  “Still have your coffee black?”

  She nodded, not able to speak for a moment. She was in the shower with him, soaping him all over, before he left for work that long-ago morning. She’d never seen such a beautiful body, and Tony was not the least self-conscious about his superb physical assets. In the bright light of the bathroom she’d explored and admired him, watching with fascination as his sex responded to her slippery caresses.

  She shook herself back to the present and accepted her coffee, eyes avoiding his probing gaze, willing the tremors to leave her. For she was shaking all over, remembering. And she must try not to remember. Not to remember that golden week when she’d finally been treated as a woman. “It sounds as though the twins know how to tell the time, anyway,” she said in desperation.

  “They’re okay on time, and numbers generally. Julia got them up to speed there.”

  Ellie noticed he said his wife’s name matter-of-factly—no emotional catch in his voice.

  “And you’ll find they’re very good on how animals make babies.” He flashed a wicked grin at her as Ellie choked on her coffee. He rose and reached to circle a firm hand over her back until she recovered from her splutters.

  She had to fight hard not to respond to his well-meaning caress. Because of course it was only a pat on the back—she’d certainly not read more than that into it.

  “Fine on colours,” he continued, hand still circling softly. “No good at reading. Should they be reading yet?”

  She cleared her throat and tried to shrink away from him. “It’s time to make a start. I’ll get onto that right away.”

  He nodded, satisfied. “How strange it should be you,” he mused. “Ellinore for Ellie. I gave it no real thought...”

  “You had other things on your mind.”

  Another woman, another family.

  “Yes... well...” He finally removed his hand and Ellie willed herself not to snatch it back. It had felt so right, moving across her thin T-shirt, comforting her yearning skin.

  She took a bite of her toast, and found she’d not yet spread it with jam. She reached for the jar—brand new, the lid firmly screwed on. Store-bought, not homemade, which she found surprising so far from the nearest town. She wrenched at it to open it, but it was stuck down with sugar.

  Tony closed a warm hand around hers. “Let me,” he said without fuss.

  She relinquished the jar to his superior strength, and watched as he twisted it undone. “Not a luxury I’m used to.”

  “Strawberry jam?”

  “A man to open jars.”

  He laughed at that. “Husband’s duty,” he said. “Julia ended up as weak as a kitten. Ginny has some arthritis in her hands. And my two tinies aren’t up to it yet.” He cast an amused glance in the twins’ direction. They peeked around the doorframe, waiting for Ellie to finish her breakfast. “Can’t wait for the teacher, eh? We’ll see how long that lasts.”

  “Don’t put them off before I’ve even started!”

  He dropped his voice so only Ellie could hear. “They’re keen for any attention at all. They’ve... missed out on some of the things they should have been enjoying.”

  Ellie watched his beautiful lips compress, itching to hear more, yet not wanting to know how much in love he’d been with the mother of his children. She pushed the last corner of toast into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Right,” she said. “We’ll see how enjoyable we can make things. Do you have any cardboard? Old grocery cartons that we could cut up, maybe?”

  “I’ll have a look in the storeroom,” he said. “I’ll get Ginny to give you a tour of the whole place later today—she said you didn’t see much last night.”

  “I was deathly tired. Late start. Long trip on unfamiliar roads. She said it’d be okay if I unpacked and went to bed early.”

  “No worries. I was out with the vet until late—one of our mares was having a difficult time foaling.” He sent her a devastating smile. “It’s nice to meet you looking fresh as a daisy if deathly tired was the option.”

  Fresh as a daisy? A daisy that was so overcome with shuddering expectation and shock that she was in danger of shaking her petals off... “It’s just this yellow T-shirt,” she murmured.

  “It’s everything about you. You’re absolutely as I remember, and utterly different, too.”

  “I should hope so, after all these years,” she said, rising and pushing her chair back under the table.

  xxx

  He continued to inspect her as she moved away. She was the lovely young girl at the hotel swimming pool.

  The temptress in the white sundress who’d danced like a dream.

  And the shy, determined virgin who’d pulled him down into her welcoming body as she lay beneath him in the moonlight that long ago evening.

  A decade later she was self-possessed, slightly distant, with an indefinable air of ‘touch-me-not’ that had him curiously rattled. He could handle huge stud-bulls, dominate boardrooms, keep a plane safely aloft, control the whole of his vast estate—but he had no idea how to force his way through the gossamer barrier she’d erected between them.


  Ellie turned and held out her hands toward his girls, and they claimed one each, pulling her through the door, chattering and squealing, vying for her attention. Tony sat on at the table, staring sightlessly after them.

  His first love was back.

  Everything in his busy predictable life had just been turned on its head.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I’m stuck,” she yelled.

  The twins giggled and shrieked. They’d led her out to see the ducks, and Ellie now stood ankle-deep in gloopy mud. The innocent looking little stream that ran a hundred yards from the house had saturated the ground and turned part of it into a bog.

  “Come on, Ellie,” Antonia squealed.

  “It’s easy,” Carolyn yelled.

  Ellie sighed deeply, rolled her jeans up another couple of turns, and slid her feet from her sandals. She fished them out of the disgusting mess, hoping that might make it easier to escape. A hot blush raced up her neck and over her face—her authority was disappearing fast. She needed this job and didn’t want to jeopardise her chances of keeping it. A short-term contract with accommodation over the summer school holiday was more than she’d dared hoped for—and perfect apart from the obvious fly in the ointment called Tony. She’d somehow just have to cope with him. And hope she survived.

  She pulled first one foot out of the ooze and repositioned it, then the other. Slowly she stepped free.

  xxx

  Tony listened with half an ear to the excited chatter and laughter. There’d not been enough of that in his life lately; he strolled out from his farm office to investigate.

  The corners of his mouth twitched when he found Ellie on the gravelled driveway, mucky sandals held aloft by their straps. She hobbled along, exclaiming as the sharp stones bit into the soft soles of her feet.

  “Been led astray, have you?” he called, picking up speed, scooping her into his arms and carrying her, protesting vigorously, across to one of the other buildings.

  “Let me go, you clown!”

  “You can’t walk over this on your tender townie feet,” he said, holding her firmly across his chest.

  “This is no way for your twins to see their tutor,” she grumped.

  “Did you two do that on purpose?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder and nearly brushing Ellie’s lips with his own as he turned. Her sweet breath caressed his face. Her perfume floated on the warm air, teasing his senses.

  Keep your distance. Treat it as a joke.

  He shot her an amused glance, hoping that would work. Her blue eyes sparked with challenge only inches from his. Their bodies rubbed together as he walked...the sweetest of tortures and sharpest of provocations. One of his hands practically cupped her breast.

  “No, Daddy,” the twins chorused.

  “You weigh no more than you did at eighteen,” he murmured in Ellie’s ear as he carried her. “I can feel your bones—among other things...”

  Ellie fumed and struggled, but succeeded only in making him smile more broadly and tighten his grip on her. “Relax, Ellie. You’re safe enough now.”

  “I was safe enough a minute back. I made it out of your wretched bog under my own steam.”

  “I mean safe enough with me.” He gave her a small shake to emphasise the word. “You seem—edgy?” he said, reluctantly setting her down next to one of the other farm buildings. He turned on a tap with a garden hose attached.

  “I’ll do it,” she insisted, but he quickly squatted beside her, rinsing the mud away, running his hands over her ankles and feet. Loving the excuse of having his hands on her again.

  So fast, so easily, after all this time.

  “This little piggy went to market...” he said, tweaking her smallest toe.

  “And this little piggy got none,” she snapped.

  “Had none,” he corrected, glancing up at her, knowing full well what she’d meant, and not intending to let her get away with it. She’d felt fantastic in his arms. He’d drawn in the scent of her hair and skin ... enjoyed the same sweet fragrance that had turned him on so long ago.

  She’d plummeted back into his life like a stone into a still pond, causing ripples—ripples of longing to recapture their time together. Ellie had excited and challenged him, and messed with his mind far more than he’d been willing to admit back then.

  And she has no husband in the way.

  Was she his reward for enduring the last two bitter years of marriage to Julia? Followed by the months of guilt-ridden regret as he watched her slowly die?

  Did he deserve such a prize after ruining Julia’s life?

  He sighed deeply as he finished smoothing his hands over Ellie’s fine-boned ankles, and turned his attention to her sandals. Eventually he handed them back to her. “They’ll get you back to the house, anyway. Put them somewhere warm to dry out and they might recover.”

  xxx

  Ellie eased the damp straps back over her feet. No doubt Tony had seen they were the cheapest of the cheap. It was humiliating to be reduced to this; the minimum of possessions, and none of them beautiful.

  Even before the fire, she’d had very little. Now she had even less. She felt the embarrassment keenly, assuming his wife owned European shoes, designer clothes, and expensive jewellery. Wharemoana was huge and superbly maintained. Money was plainly available in generous quantities. Even the twins’ everyday clothes had labels she’d seen only in the glossy magazines of the school staffroom. Another world—not hers.

  She shook her head in an attempt to clear such thoughts away. Why was she worrying about her appearance all of a sudden? The last thing she wanted was to attract Tony. There was plenty on her plate already. “Thank you,” she said ungraciously, and hurried inside to collect other shoes from her meagre selection.

  Her bedroom mirror told the tale all too clearly. She was flushed and huge-eyed. Tousled and trembling. And he’d only been washing her muddy feet and disgusting old sandals...

  How would she survive if he decided to seriously turn his potent charm in her direction? But of course he couldn’t. His wife had died quite recently. He’d have no interest in the temporary teacher.

  What had his words been? Something about not jumping her in front of his mother-in-law and daughters? Of course he’d ignore her. So why had some vicious knife-blade peeled ribbons of disappointment off her heart?

  She flopped down on the bed for a moment and reached for Callum’s photograph. He grinned back at her with the same smile as the man who’d been crouched at her feet just minutes before. She ran an affectionate finger across her son’s face, caressing his skin and soft thick hair. His father in every respect. Even his dark brown eyes had Tony’s golden flashes of mischief.

  She’d been away from him for only one day, and already it was breaking her heart not to be able to see him, touch him, and ask about his day at school. She’d known it would be a long heart-rending summer without him, but to be aching unbearably so soon was much worse than she’d been expecting.

  Sighing, she set the photo down again on the chest of drawers beside her bed. He was the last thing she chose to see at night...the first she wanted to find upon waking. Tony’s lovely secret son.

  xxx

  The previous afternoon, she’d driven through the rolling New Zealand countryside in her battered old hatchback. The early summer heat had been oppressive. Her hair was too hot on her shoulders so she’d stopped and tied it into a ponytail while she let a rattling stock transporter hurtle by. The sharp smell of sheep dung had seeped through the car’s ventilation system and she’d pushed the air vent closed for a few stifling minutes until the truck was well clear.

  Once she turned off the main highway to the unsealed back-country road, hard stones caught in her tyre treads and flew noisily up under the bodywork. Her eyes narrowed each time an occasional vehicle swept by, scattering pebbles and leaving a choking cloud of pale dust to peer through.

  Unused to such conditions, she drove ever more slowly, trying to keep her wheels lined up
in the smoother ruts, worrying she’d slide in the loose gravel and pitch right off the road on one of the corners.

  Somehow she misread the instructions and went miles too far north. Finally, defeated, she’d bumped up the long drive to one of the remote farmhouses, and was redirected as though everyone should know the way to Wharemoana.

  At last she’d turned in through the vast iron gates. Her teeth rattled together like dice in a cup as the car shuddered over the cattle-stop bars. Then the weary relief of arriving changed to awe and apprehension.

  The long driveway curved through an immense, beautifully tended garden. The grand old two-storied timber homestead gleamed golden in the late afternoon sun. This was not the way she’d pictured the farm.

  Reasonably remote, yes. A house big enough to accommodate an extra guest—fine. Some sheepdogs tied up by a nearby tractor shed.

  But this was practically a village—and an opulent one at that. The outbuildings were smartly painted to match the main homestead. Long-established trees cast pools of welcome shade. And the roaring Pacific Ocean glimmered and thrashed against the wild coastline only a few hundred yards distant.

  She should have expected that.

  Whare—far-ray—the house.

  Moana—mo-arna—the sea.

  Far-ray-mo-arna. The house by the sea. She’d rolled the melodious Maori word around her tongue before braking to a halt under the big sheltering portico. Easing stiffly from the driver’s seat, she tugged and slapped at her creased-up jeans and dusty navy T-shirt. A floaty dress and high heels would have been much more appropriate in such a sumptuous setting. Not that she had any dresses left after the fire. And only one pair of horribly uncomfortable high heels, come to that.

  As she approached the gleaming ruby front door it swung open, and a buxom fair-haired woman stepped out to welcome her. “Ellinore? Lovely to meet you. I’m Virginia Eastman.”

  So this was the voice on the phone, the signature on the letter, the grandmother of the two little girls who needed tutoring? Ellie reached out to shake hands. “I’d prefer just Ellie.”

  Virginia nodded. “Ellie. I’ll try and remember that. Leave the car there until tomorrow. We’re not expecting anyone else this evening. You can put it into one of the garages around the back once you’re unloaded. Come in and get settled first.”