Christmas Under a Starlit Sky

by Holly Martin

  The unmistakable Skype ringtone suddenly sounded through his computer and he smiled, knowing it would be Taylor, his sister. He quickly clicked on the button to answer and a few seconds later her smiling face appeared on the screen, wearing a pink paper crown at a squiffy angle. She was obviously enjoying the celebrations. In the background he could see his niece and nephew playing with a video game against their dad while his mum dozed in a chair. It was the same scene every Christmas – they’d eat until their bellies were fit to burst and then play games all afternoon while his parents fell asleep on the sofa. He missed them and all their craziness and predictability. Although he had worked throughout Christmas in the past, he always managed to spend either Christmas Eve or Boxing Day with his family and sometimes even Christmas Day afternoon and evening. And although his temporary assignment had taken him away from that this year, he hadn’t really minded. It felt good, in a way, to be out of that rut, doing something different and Taylor had promised him they would somehow play their annual game of Cluedo over Skype.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ Taylor said, holding a glass of wine up to the screen.

  Adam looked around for something to toast her with in return and offered up an empty coffee mug.

  ‘Happy Christmas, sis.’

  She frowned slightly. ‘Are you working?’

  ‘Yeah, you know how it is. There’s been a bit of an emergency actually. Remember Neve? She fell down the stairs and she’s been rushed to hospital.’

  ‘Oh no, is she OK?’

  ‘Her brother has just sent me a text to say she’s fine and that he’d call me later so I’m presuming everything is OK. It’s left things here in a bit of chaos though.’

  ‘Is that your way of saying you haven’t got time for Cluedo?’

  ‘I’ve always got time for Cluedo, especially when it’s with you,’ Adam said, knowing he barely had the time for this phone call, let alone a very bizarre Skype game of Cluedo.

  ‘We miss you, it’s just not the same without you.’

  He smiled, sadly. ‘I miss you too.’

  ‘Tell me you at least had time to eat some turkey with all the trimmings?’

  ‘No, but I did have a rather nice turkey and stuffing sandwich.’

  ‘How nice?’ Taylor narrowed her eyes, suspiciously.

  ‘Not as good as your turkey leftover sandwiches obviously.’

  Taylor laughed. ‘Good answer. How is it up there, is it really barren and remote?’

  Adam looked out the window at the snow-covered lodges and the fairy lights strewn from the roofs, gently swaying in the wind. ‘It’s actually really beautiful. I saw the Northern Lights last night.’

  ‘Oh wow, I’ve always wanted to see them! What were they like?’

  ‘Incredible, watching them dance in the sky was not like anything I’ve ever seen. They were red and pink, which apparently, according to the locals, is a foretelling of love.’

  Taylor studied him for a moment, then she leaned forward with a huge smile on her face. ‘You’ve met someone.’

  ‘I have not.’

  ‘Yes, you have. I can see it on your face.’

  ‘No, there’s...’ He sighed. There was no point lying to his sister, she could see right through him. ‘There’s a girl called Ivy, she seems really nice.’

  Taylor squealed with excitement. ‘Tell me everything.’

  ‘There’s not a lot to tell at the moment. We were supposed to meet for lunch today and after everything that happened with Neve, I ended up standing her up. It’s not exactly a good start.’

  ‘Yes, but surely you’ve apologised and explained to her what happened,’ Taylor said, simply, even though Adam knew it would probably be a lot harder than she made it sound.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Why not? Why are you sat here talking to me when you could be spending Christmas with your new girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’

  ‘But you’re hoping she wants the position.’

  He really did. ‘I leave in three months.’

  ‘So what? If you have something special, you’ll make the distance work somehow. Go and talk to her.’

  Adam smirked at how pushy his sister was. She had always been the same. But she was right. It didn’t have to be over in three months. He didn’t have to hold himself back from getting too attached. If they still wanted to see each other after the three months were up, they could work something out. Scotland was only a few hours away by plane from London. It wasn’t the other side of the world.

  ‘I’ll talk to her. I will, I promise, but first we need to figure out how to play Cluedo over Skype.’

  Taylor sighed. ‘OK, but I want a full report tomorrow.’

  ‘I promise, I’ll give you the full details.’

  ‘I’ve already dealt the cards and yours are here.’ Taylor held up a small pile. ‘So I figured I would just show you what you have and then put them under the board so no one else can see them.’

  ‘And I can trust you that you haven’t already cheated and had a peek,’ Adam said.

  Taylor gave a feigned look of outrage when they both knew she was a big cheater whenever it came to Cluedo. He smiled.

  Oliver and Megan, his niece and nephew, suddenly came running over and waved at him inanely as they picked up their cards to inspect what they had, as if playing Cluedo over Skype was completely the norm. Maybe Christmas wouldn’t be a complete washout after all. And if he could only sort things out with Ivy then Christmas could actually turn out to be quite wonderful.

  Oakley stared out of the hospital window at the dark sky filled with a thousand stars. Christmas Day was coming to an end and nowhere in his wildest dreams had he imagined it would turn out like this.

  He had envisaged many possible scenarios and although him proposing and Neve throwing herself into his arms, crying tears of joy that they were going to be husband and wife was a nice dream, knowing Neve it was unlikely to be a reality. He had imagined that he would have to work at persuading her to say yes, that he would have to spend the whole week showing her how much he loved her and how important she was to him. He predicted that she would throw up a load of possible reasons why she couldn’t marry him and he had believed that he had an answer for every possible excuse. He had never envisaged that one of those reasons would be her being pregnant with another man’s child.

  He focussed his attention on the woman he loved, fast asleep in the hospital bed. She had slept for most of the day which, in his mind, wasn’t good. The hospital, however, had assured him that everything was fine. They had done so many scans and tests – taking her blood, taking a urine sample, poked, prodded, measured, listened to her heartbeat, listened to the baby’s heartbeat, took more scans of her head, checked her for other possible breakages – and they were more than happy that Neve and the little baby boy were doing fine. As she had been sleepy, the hospital had wanted to keep her in overnight to be on the safe side and, though Neve had protested, Oakley had insisted she listen to them.

  He hadn’t let go of her hand all day. When her family had arrived they’d had to squeeze in around the other side of the bed as he had quite simply refused to leave her side. They’d all congratulated them on their engagement and the upcoming baby’s arrival, assuming, of course, that he was the father. Neve hadn’t told them otherwise and he hadn’t found it in him to correct them either. In fact he had barely spoken since he had seen the baby on the scan. The little boy that wasn’t his, growing strongly inside the woman he loved with everything he had.

  He had been beyond relieved that the tiny baby was OK, he couldn’t bear the heartbreak that Neve would go through if she lost the child she wanted so much. The child that he hadn’t wanted to have when they were together. He did want children, one day, but with his career just taking off and his busy filming schedule shooting in several different locations, it would have been impractical to think about raising a child at that time.

  Had that been why she had finished wit
h him? Neve adored her niece, Wren, and he knew she ached for a child of her own and he kept putting her off.

  Had she deliberately slept with someone just so she could get pregnant? Or had it been like she said, she’d just got drunk one night and the child had been the result of a drunken accident? The thought of Adam taking advantage of Neve when she was drunk and upset filled him with so much anger. And where had Adam been when her whole family had rushed to the hospital to be at her side? Clearly he didn’t care about Neve or the baby and for him it had just been about sex, which meant Neve would be left to raise the baby on her own.

  June twenty-eighth. That was the date when everything would change. Hell, everything had already changed. That was just over six months from now, which meant that Neve was already nearly three months pregnant. When had he flown out of London? It was October, in the middle some time, he was sure it was the fifteenth or was it the tenth? He tried to do the maths but he was so unbelievably tired that he couldn’t work it out. So it had been about nine or ten weeks since he left Neve. Had she slept with someone the day after he’d gone, when the scent of him was still on her skin? The thought made him sick, that she could move on so quickly was not good.

  Yet he still had feelings for her, he couldn’t just switch them off. He cared about her being in pain, he cared about the baby that wasn’t his.

  He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles, then let his mouth kiss on top of her engagement ring, the ring that marked her as his responsibility, through good times and the bad.

  Just then the door to the room was pushed open and a nurse he hadn’t met before jumped at seeing him there.

  ‘Visiting hours finished hours ago,’ the nurse said, walking to the other side of Neve’s bed and checking the monitor she was hooked up to.

  Gabe and his family had been ushered out a few hours before and he knew they were all staying in a nearby hotel for the night. There was no question of him leaving though.

  ‘I can’t leave her,’ Oakley said, his voice coarse and croaky.

  The nurse sighed. ‘Can I get you a drink or something to eat?’

  ‘Some of that horrible black stuff the machine calls coffee would be great,’ Oakley said.

  She smiled. ‘I’ll see what I can do. There’s, um... been a few journalists hanging around, asking questions.’

  Oakley blinked, wondering how this could possibly be newsworthy, but everything he did was considered a matter of public interest so the possibility of him being about to become a dad for the first time would have been very interesting – well, at least to the paparazzi that hounded him everywhere he went. How they had found out he was here was a different matter entirely.

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘That you weren’t here and that they were obviously mistaken.’

  Oakley smiled with gratitude. It wouldn’t throw them off the scent, but it might buy them some time while he worked out how he could protect Neve from the fall-out of this too.

  Adam walked into the village, the sound of snow crunching under his boots the only noise he could hear, beyond the distant waves crashing onto the rocks.

  It really was quite beautiful here, a tranquil haven away from it all. The noise of London never stopped, no matter what time of day it was, but here it was almost silent and he liked it. He had liked the noise, the hustle and bustle, the constant busyness of the city, it helped to distract him from the heartbreak he felt after his last relationship ended. But now it was quiet here and he could listen to his head and his heart again. The pain was no longer there and maybe it was time to stop hiding and move on with his life. And maybe, just maybe, Juniper Island would be the place to do it.

  He looked around him and smiled. Most of the houses lay in darkness, though there were a few that emitted golden pools of light and he was gratified that Ivy’s was one of them.

  It had been a long day. He had stayed to help with the clearing-up of the dining room and setting up for breakfast the next day, keen for the staff to be able to have a few hours off to enjoy the remains of Christmas Day. He had talked with Gabe at length and was relieved to hear that Neve and the baby were doing fine and would most likely be able to return home the next day. Gabe also explained how they needed to start taking down the ice-carving display in the ice palace ready for the New Year’s Eve ball and Adam reassured him that he would take care of it first thing on Boxing Day morning.

  Annoyingly the journalists had been sniffing round, asking questions all day but thankfully, because Neve had never told anyone about being pregnant, the staff, when asked, could quite honestly deny all knowledge of it.

  He’d sat in his office and replied to numerous emails that had come in for Neve and Gabe’s attention. Now he just wanted to climb into bed and fall asleep, but he knew he had to apologise to Ivy first, though his plan of leaving her to calm down for a few hours had backfired when he realised just how much work he needed to do in Neve’s absence. It looked like he didn’t care about letting her down, when nothing could be further from the truth.

  He hovered outside the door to her shop for a moment, wondering whether to knock or just let himself in. He suspected the door would be unlocked as she didn’t seem to have any regard for her safety. The shop and the workshop beyond looked empty and Ivy was probably upstairs in the main living area of the house.

  He turned the handle and sure enough the door opened and he sighed. He closed it behind him and, not wanting to scare her, he thought he should make his presence known.

  ‘Ivy!’

  He walked to the bottom of the stairs, just as she peered over the top to see who it was. She didn’t say anything as she walked away but she didn’t yell at him to get out of her house either, which he took to be a good sign.

  Adam walked up the stairs and watched her as she moved around the kitchen, making a sandwich. She knew he was there but she didn’t acknowledge his presence. But what was utterly adorable was the fact that she was wearing a fluffy penguin onesie.

  ‘I bought you these,’ he said, feebly, proffering the bouquet.

  She glanced over at them and then back at the sandwich she was making that seemed to be as much of a work of art as her paintings were.

  ‘Stole one of the table decorations you mean.’

  Adam smiled, slightly. ‘Actually no, I did this myself on the way down here. Admittedly the poinsettias were stolen from the vase on reception, but the holly leaves, berries and fir branches were all picked fresh a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Flower arranging one of the many skills of a busy hotel manager then?’

  ‘My skills stretch from flower arranging, napkin folding, making a bed, how to unblock a toilet, and how to make a great cup of coffee. I wish I could say that after many years working as a deputy manager I would be more skilled at delegating but I often find that when things go wrong, it’s just better to roll up my sleeves and do the jobs that need doing.’

  ‘Very noble,’ Ivy said, slamming the top piece of bread on top of her sandwich and cutting into it with a large knife so angrily that he almost took a step back.

  ‘I am very sorry I wasn’t able to join you for lunch today. I was really looking forward to spending time with you.’

  She slammed the knife down, which he was thankful for as she spun around to face him.

  ‘I sat there alone at that table for over an hour and a half, pathetically waiting for you to turn up. I didn’t want a relationship, I didn’t want to get involved with anyone because being involved means putting your trust in someone, and that always means getting hurt. I should have listened to my head, not my heart, but foolishly, I thought you might be different.’

  Adam watched her, her hands gesticulating wildly as she spoke, the beak of the penguin hood wobbling almost comically and he wanted nothing more than to kiss her right then. He loved her passion and the fact that her anger was directed at him didn’t put him off at all.

  ‘So many times I waited for my husband like that, in fancy restaurants,
or at home after I had spent hours cooking for him, and so many times he let me down. Turned out he was sleeping with Lucy the whole time because what I was offering him at home wasn’t good enough. And now I find out that unblocking toilets and folding napkins was much more preferable to spending time with me.’

  He stepped closer. ‘That isn’t the case at all. Believe me when I say it would only have been an emergency that would have kept me away from you.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Neve fell down the stairs and knocked herself unconscious. I had to tell her family. We had to call the air ambulance to take her to hospital and then I had to get someone to fly her family out to the hospital too. At the time I should have been having lunch with you, I was babysitting Chester and playing with a bowl of cold spaghetti as his dads were ferrying Gabe and his family to the hospital.’

  The fight went out of her almost immediately. ‘Oh God, is she OK?’

  ‘Yes, she’s fine and the baby is fine too.’

  ‘She’s pregnant?’ Ivy almost whispered.

  ‘Yes, but they’re both OK and she’ll be back tomorrow.’

  ‘Why did no one tell me this when I kept asking where you were?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think the staff realised you were my date and they were trying to keep what had happened under wraps, rather than alarming the guests. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Now I feel like a complete bitch again.’

  Adam smiled and rested the bouquet on the table as he approached her, caging her in with his hands either side of her. ‘You’re not a complete bitch.’

  She grinned. ‘Just half of one?’

  He pulled a face slightly. ‘Maybe a quarter of one.’

  Ivy laughed and he wanted to keep that smile on her face.

  He reached round her, under the pretext of hugging her, but grabbed one half of her sandwich instead and as she leaned in to kiss him, he took a big bite of the sandwich.

  ‘Hey, that’s my sandwich!’ Ivy said as Adam danced away from her, mocking her by holding the sandwich just out of reach.