by Helen Brooks
They had eaten a supper of champagne and caviar snuggled together and wrapped in an enormous fleecy throw Miriam recognised as coming from the apartment, the glow from the fire and the lights from the Christmas tree throwing mellow flickering shadows over the dark room.
Later Jay had carried her up the winding staircase to their bedroom stark naked, the two of them laughing and caressing and teasing like a pair of teenagers.
The bedroom suite was gorgeous, decorated in pale greens and lilac with a large en suite and the most enormous bed, and Miriam was enchanted to see a real fire burning in the ornate fireplace. Once nestled in the soft covers, Jay had spent all night showing her how much he had missed her, their lovemaking enhanced by the truths they had whispered to each other downstairs. For the first time she was allowing herself to believe the fairy tale could come true and it was intoxicating, washing away the last of her inhibitions and giving her the courage to meet him kiss for kiss, caress for caress with an abandon she hadn’t displayed before. They had drifted off to sleep only as it grew light, large, fat flakes of snow falling outside the window.
A white Christmas. It had been her last conscious thought before she had slept and now she hugged it to her, unable to believe she was really here, with Jay, in this beautiful house for the holidays. And her mother and Clara conspiring together! She smiled to herself. It really was the season of miracles.
Jay moved slightly in his sleep, his hand on her breast tightening for a moment before relaxing again. She wanted to see his face and she tried to slowly turn but their bodies were entwined in such a way she was locked beneath him.
He shifted again and she took the opportunity to manoeuvre herself round as his leg lifted slightly before once again settling over hers. She stared at him, drinking her fill of his sleeping face, relaxed and calm and so boyish. Once he was awake a slight cynicism and hardness that the years had brought firmed his mouth and made the faint lines radiating from his eyes more pronounced, but like this he was all hers.
She caught at the thought, mentally shaking her head at herself. He was all hers, awake or asleep. She had to trust in this forever love. Too many nights in the past when they had been first married she had lain like this watching him sleep, tormenting herself with imagining how many other women had done the same. Beautiful, glamorous, exciting women. Women who still remained out there, a constant threat. But Jay didn’t want anyone else, she knew that now. She didn’t know why he loved her the way he did because she was remarkably unexceptional, but he did, and that was all that mattered.
She shut her eyes tightly, saying a little prayer of thankfulness that he hadn’t given up on her, that he had loved her enough to weather the storm and steer their boat into calm waters. When she opened them again he was staring straight at her, his beautiful tawny eyes smiling.
‘Good morning, Mrs Carter.’ He nuzzled her ear before kissing her neck. ‘You smell delicious, better than any breakfast.’
‘So do you.’ With his black hair tousled over his forehead and the sexiest stubble darkening his chin, he looked even better.
‘I had the most incredible dreams.’ His voice was still husky with sleep. ‘I dreamt we made love till dawn.’
She smiled. Pressed close to him, she could feel his hard arousal. ‘But then you woke up,’ she teased softly.
‘That I did.’ He rolled over, supporting himself by his elbows as he lay across her, the tip of his masculinity touching her most intimate place. He began to shift a few inches back and forth as he ruffled the tight curls at the V of her thighs, causing every muscle in her body to tighten.
He pushed slightly, entering her just the tiniest bit, and she gasped, exquisite ripples of sensation causing her abdomen to contract.
‘Every morning is going to start like this.’ He kissed her open mouth, his body continuing to play with hers. He wasn’t rushing her, the slow sensuality building as he used his skill to heighten her responses. Only when she was at fever-pitch did he possess her completely, her internal muscles contracting so violently that they provided his release too.
It was a while before their bodies finally became still, and even then Miriam continued to tremble in the aftermath of passion. Jay cradled her to him, kissing her nose, her eyes, her forehead with tiny, burning kisses before finally taking her mouth.
Their joining had been intense and almost painfully poignant. A year today she had woken up wanting to die, to just go to sleep and never wake up, believing she had lost him.
‘There has never been anyone but you and there never will be.’ He had read her mind with that remarkable way he had. ‘Do you believe that, Miriam? Are you there yet?’
She was learning not to be surprised at his intuition. ‘I think so,’ she whispered shakily. ‘I want to believe it.’
‘You will.’ His voice rang with assurance. ‘You’re mine in the same way I’m yours. It’s actually very simple.’
She nodded, her head against his chest, a wave of emotion threatening to consume her. He was so strong, so sure. If she couldn’t trust her own feelings of fear and vulnerability, perhaps she could trust Jay? It was a new slant on things and one that made sense. She clung to him, needing his strength and love. For the first time she realised she could let go and be herself, that he wouldn’t condemn her for her fears but would shoulder them with her.
Tremblingly, she murmured, ‘I do trust you, Jay. I’m beginning to realise it’s Miriam Carter I’m not sure about. The more I try to analyse the past the more I realise what a mess I’ve made of things.’
‘Not really.’ He took her face in his hands. ‘When I talked with your mother she was the first to admit she’d made a big mistake in not discussing your father leaving with you. It left a void in which all kinds of misunderstanding could grow. She did it absolutely for the best at the time but she told me you both struggled in the early days when money was very tight and you had no real home. Your father sent no maintenance and did nothing to help her, but it wasn’t that she minded so much. It was his ability to cut his own flesh and blood out of his life. If that hurt her it must have hurt you too.’
Miriam nodded. She had always felt it was a weakness and almost a betrayal of her mother to mind that her father was gone, to miss him, but the child she had been then had minded. And to cover up the hurt and sense of rejection she had told herself she hated and despised him. She’d told herself that so often it had become true. ‘I used to wonder what was wrong with me that my own father didn’t want me,’ she admitted slowly. ‘I think I even thought that if they hadn’t had me then he would have stayed with my mother and they’d have been happy, like they must have been before I was born.’
He kissed away her tears, hugging her to him. ‘But you don’t think like that any more?’
She shook her head. ‘Not after talking with my mother.’
‘And you accept he was flawed? That he couldn’t really love anyone but himself? There are men and women like that out there, sweetheart, and it was just unfortunate your mother got involved with one when she was so young and naive.’
‘I know.’
‘But our children will know what it is to have two parents who love each other and them,’ he said tenderly, ‘and that’s what you focus on in the future. Our home will be a place with no secrets, no skeletons in cupboards. We’ll give them a foundation of truth and trust to build their lives on.’
Her arms tightened around him. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, her voice husky with love.
‘And I you.’ He kissed her again, hard and passionately, before sitting up in bed. ‘And I hate to bring things down to a more mundane level but I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.’
She smiled at his rueful face. ‘I presume in all this planning you’ve been doing you stocked the fridge and freezer?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He grinned complacently. ‘And there’s plenty of champagne and wine to see us over the Christmas break. I’ve thought of everything.’
She didn’t doubt it.
‘We’ll eat and then I’ll show you the rest of the house and the grounds.’ He slid out of bed, reaching for one of the two thick, fleecy robes which again Miriam recognised from the apartment, throwing it to her before pulling on his own. ‘Come on, woman,’ he said teasingly, ‘into the kitchen where you belong.’
The next few days were heaven on earth. The house was wonderful and even before she’d seen each room Miriam had agreed they would put in an offer to Jayne’s friends.
Once Jay knew she had fallen in love with the magnificent old house he admitted the couple who owned it were looking to move out soon, the husband having just been told he’d secured a terrific job in the States close to his elderly parents, who were beginning to get quite frail.
Christmas Eve afternoon they spent making a family of snowmen in the garden like two excited children, returning to the warmth of the house as the sun set in a river of red and gold, turning the tranquil, frosted-pearl sky into a blaze of breathtaking colour.
That night they made love again before falling asleep in each other’s arms, sated and happy, waking up on Christmas Day to the sound of church bells and more snow. The trees in the grounds at the back of the house were a Christmas-card wonderland and they stood wrapped in each other’s arms once again, gazing out into the wintry beauty for some time before having breakfast and then walking to the small parish church for the Christmas service.
Jay had bought her heaps of presents, which he’d piled around the tree. Some were silly, funny gifts to make her laugh—a pair of Rudolph slippers with massive red noses that bobbed when she walked and a Father Christmas hat that sang ‘When Santa Got Stuck up the Chimney’ when you pressed the pompom on the top of the hat. Others, like the sexy black underwear and finely wrought gold and diamond bracelet, were more expensive. Miriam phoned her mother to wish her a happy Christmas and the two of them laughed and cried together, promising they would all get together for a meal very soon.
Boxing Day they spent in bed, a day of pure indulgence, the need inside them raging and overpowering. Miriam found she couldn’t get enough of Jay and she knew he felt the same. The taste, the smell, the feel of him was all-important to her, and she found it hard to believe she’d managed to get through the last twelve months without being able to run her hands over his hard body and sleep curled close into his warmth each night.
Jayne and Guy called by the day after Boxing Day, inviting them to a New Year’s Eve party they were holding so they could meet all the neighbours. Jayne was already looking prettily pregnant and the pair of them were touchingly proud of the small, compact mound in her stomach.
Miriam had wondered how Jay’s sister would be with her when they met again but she needn’t have worried. It was as if they had only seen each other the day before.
‘Come early on New Year’s Eve,’ Jayne said as they hugged goodbye on the doorstep. ‘I want to show you the baby’s room. We’ve decorated it in cream and yellow—I didn’t want to know whether it was a boy or a girl.’ She wrinkled her small nose. ‘I said to Guy I want a surprise at the end of all the hard work.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ said Miriam, laughing, and silently blessing Jay’s sister for her sunny, forgiving nature. It would be lovely to live so close to them.
New Year’s Eve was crisply cold and frosty, and as Miriam got ready for the party she was thankful she had splashed out on a couple of new cocktail dresses for the proposed holiday with Clara. The silk-mix red dress strewn with pearls brought out the highlights in her chestnut hair, and with Jay’s bracelet on her wrist and simple diamond studs in her ears she felt elegant for once.
Jay whistled admiringly as he zipped her into the dress. ‘You look a million dollars,’ he murmured softly, dropping a swift kiss on the back of her neck. She’d looped her hair on top of her head, leaving a few wispy curls to soften the style, and now he wound a tendril around one finger, adding, ‘But I prefer you in that gorgeous birthday suit of yours.’
Miriam giggled. ‘I think Jayne and Guy might have something to say if I turned up at their party stark naked to meet the neighbours, don’t you?’
‘You could still wear my bracelet.’
‘Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?’
The snow had gradually dispersed in the meagre warmth of a winter sun over the last two or three days, although evidence of it still remained where snow ploughs had banked masses at the side of roads, and their family of snowmen in the garden were still there, albeit just formless lumps now. Jayne and Guy’s house being a fifteen-minute walk away, they decided not to take the car.
It was late afternoon when they left, wrapped up warmly against the bitter cold. Jack Frost had already been hard at work and a glittering coating of white adorned the bare branches of trees and bushes, creating a carpet of diamond dust on the ground. There had been another magnificent sunset earlier, but now the night sky was a soft indigo, the fragrance of burning leaves and woodsmoke in the still air.
This was almost too beautiful, too perfect. As Miriam held tightly to Jay’s arm and looked up at the star-studded sky she felt a moment’s fear prick her happiness before she told herself not to be so silly. They were together again and they loved each other. Nothing could get in the way of that.
Jayne and Guy’s house was a large semi-detached Victorian property in the heart of the small village near by, and after Jayne had shown her the baby’s room and Miriam had oohed and ahhed over the collection of tiny vests, sleeping suits and other paraphernalia they went downstairs to join the two men, who were sitting in front of the fire with a drink in their hands. Jay slipped his arm around her as she sat down beside him and Guy poured her a glass of wine, Jayne wrinkling her nose at the orange juice she had been drinking since her pregnancy had been confirmed. ‘Not that I mind really,’ she added quickly—as though anyone had doubted that.
They spent a pleasant hour until the first of the guests began to arrive and soon the party was going with a swing. The neighbours turned out to be a pleasant group of people on the whole, and Miriam was just laughing at something one of Jayne’s old university friends had said—a rather zany girl who was eight months pregnant and reminded her of Clara, but with a bump—when she glanced across the room as the latest guests arrived.
The smile froze on her face. She blinked, but the tall blonde woman hanging on the stout older man’s arm remained. Not an hallucination, then. Belinda Poppins really was standing there as large as life, looking absolutely marvelous in a skin-tight black dress with a plunging neckline that ended in a gather at her waist.
‘Wow.’ Clara with a bump followed her gaze. ‘She’s got some nerve, even with the modern miracle of invisible tape. Still, if you’ve got it, flaunt it. Isn’t that what they say?’
She must have made some reply, although she didn’t know what. Jay was talking to a young couple on the other side of the room and as she looked across at him he glanced up and caught her gaze, smiling before his face straightened as he took in her expression. Instinctively her eyes went back to Belinda and as he followed the direction she was looking she saw him become very still for a moment. Then he was making his way towards her, his tawny eyes intent on her white face.
‘I didn’t know.’ As he reached her he took her arm, pulling her into him with his back to the rest of the room, so shielding her. ‘I had absolutely no idea Jayne knew her; to my knowledge she’s never met her. You believe me, don’t you?’
She nodded, unable to speak.
‘And Jayne wouldn’t have invited her if she knew who she was anyway. It must be the man she’s with that’s the contact.’
Miriam nodded again.
‘I can’t believe it; of all the things to happen.’ He swore softly under his breath, still holding her tight.
Whether it was Jay’s obvious distress or her new-found belief and trust in him which had steadily grown over the last little while, Miriam didn’t know, but suddenly her mind started to work again. Reaching up, she touched his fa
ce. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said quietly. ‘She can’t hurt us any more, Jay. Her lies are useless now.’
‘We’ll go.’
‘No.’ Her stomach was turning over with the shock of seeing the woman who had caused them such heartache but at the same time she felt something strange bubbling up. She didn’t know if it was thankfulness or relief or even joy, but it was all to do with the knowledge that, seeing Belinda again like this, she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Jay hadn’t betrayed her with this woman. How could she have thought it for one moment? she asked herself in amazement. Belinda looked what she was, a beautiful, cold, poisonous snake, shallow and without morals. And Jay? Jay was fine and good and honest. Even if he had been physically attracted to Belinda, which she didn’t think was the case, he wouldn’t have done anything about it, loving her, his wife, as he did. When Jay had asked her to be his wife and had stood beside her and said his vows before God and man he had meant them for life. She had known that then or she wouldn’t have married him and she knew it now—how could she have lost that confidence during the time in between? But never again.
‘No?’ He looked down into her face, willing her to be honest with him about how she was feeling.
‘Jay, I love you and I trust you.’ It probably wasn’t the place to make the declaration, it perhaps ought to have been said after they had made love or looking at a beautiful sunset or something equally romantic, but it was the right time none the less. ‘And I believe in you absolutely. All the Belindas in the world can’t impinge on us, I know that now. So we’ll stay as long as we want to, although I’ve no plans to become her new best friend.’
He didn’t smile and a long pause ensued, their eyes locked. She willed him to see what was in hers. Finally he reached out and touched her cheek, one tender stroke of the backs of his fingers down her soft skin. ‘I love you,’ he said so softly she was almost reading his lips. ‘So much.’