The Billionaire's Christmas Baby

by Marion Lennox

  He could have taken the baby straight to the nearest welfare service, or he could have let the media know and the ensuing storm might have ensured Isabelle would take the baby back. Publicity was Isabelle’s reason for existing. She could see Isabelle facing the press, woebegone, all innocence.

  I just needed my beautiful daughter’s family to acknowledge her existence. She’s part of the Grayland dynasty and she’s been ignored...

  Okay, she didn’t know if that was how it would have played out but Max hadn’t risked it. He’d accepted responsibility, even though it meant... Christmas with her?

  What a sacrifice. Christmas with the cleaning lady.

  She found herself smiling. This was fantasy, being landed with a billionaire. For two days.

  Okay, one day because she’d be back at work tomorrow. Max would stay on for the extra day, she guessed, because there was no babysitting service at the hotel until after Boxing Day. But Gran could give advice while she was at work and Chloe and Tom didn’t start back at their holiday jobs until the day after Boxing Day either. They could look after one little baby. They could even have fun.

  And there was that worm again, that niggle of jealousy she spent her life suppressing. Whenever something nice happened she had to work. Or do something else. Nice things happened to other people.

  Like Max staying an extra day? Was that nice?

  There was a thought that wasn’t worth exploring. He was a guy she was being kind to. He was part of her working life.

  Speaking of which, she had to get those veggies done. She had a decent veggie garden out the back and she’d been threatening death to anyone who touched a pea for the last week. Therefore they were ripe for picking. She’d left it until this morning so they’d be at their peak.

  So get up and pick peas and stop thinking about Max, she told herself fiercely, and threw back the covers and headed for the shower.

  Merry Christmas.

  * * *

  Phoebe woke early but Max was already awake. As she started to stir he dressed fast, then headed for the kitchen. He made her bottle quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping house and by the time she opened her mouth to wail he was ready to scoop her up and give her what she needed.

  Success!

  He sat on the windowsill while he fed her, so he saw Chloe heading off for a run. He had them sorted by now. Chloe was the fourth of the siblings, studying fashion design. She’d been on the opposing basketball team last night, a ball of vibrant energy, and it didn’t surprise him to see her running into the dawn. Half an hour later he watched her return, check her time then start to do a wind-down on the back lawn.

  Phoebe was still awake, lying sleepily in his arms. He carried his bundle out to meet her.

  ‘Hey, Chloe!’

  ‘Hey,’ she said cheerily. ‘How’s the rug rat?’

  ‘Fed and sleepy. Can I talk to you?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Fifteen minutes later they were still sitting on the back step when Sunny emerged. She was wearing old jeans and a stained T-shirt, carrying a colander. She looked like she meant business.

  She stopped dead when she saw them.

  ‘Hey.’ Chloe jumped up and greeted her big sister with a hug. ‘Happy Christmas. It’s going to be a gorgeous day. Max and I have been busy making plans.’

  ‘What plans?’

  ‘That’d be telling. Christmas is all about surprises and I’m loving this one. Meanwhile, I promised Kim and Sarah I’d Skype them. They’re in London—it’s still Christmas Eve over there and I need to catch them before they go clubbing. See you soon.’

  She disappeared and Max watched Sunny’s face as she watched her go. It was a mixture of pride and resignation—mostly pride, though. He looked again at the colander, at Sunny’s working clothes, and he thought, Does anyone in this family notice? Last night they’d all played basketball and Sunny had cooked. Now Chloe was Skyping her clubbing friends while Sunny worked again.

  ‘Colander?’ he queried but Sunny was stooping to check Phoebe. Making sure he’d kept her alive during the night?

  ‘Great,’ she said softly, touching a tiny, sleepy cheek. ‘Well done, you.’

  And what was in those few words to make his chest swell? He’d kept Phoebe alive overnight without waking Sunny. What a hero!

  ‘I’m glad we didn’t need to wake you,’ he managed.

  ‘Me too. I was tired.’

  You’re still tired, he thought, looking at the shadows under her eyes, but somehow he knew those shadows were permanent.

  ‘Colander?’ he said again.

  ‘Peas.’

  ‘Peas. Right.’

  ‘In the veggie garden. You want to see?’

  ‘Okay.’ He rose and carried the sleepy baby in his arms, following her around to the back of the house.

  He hadn’t seen this last night. It was a vegetable garden of magnificent proportions. Tomatoes, beans, peas, corn, lettuces, berries—rows of carefully tended crops in all different stages of growth.

  Sunny headed for the peas and started picking. With Phoebe in his arms he couldn’t help. He watched for a while, stunned at the scale of the garden. ‘Who cares for all this?’

  ‘Pa started it decades back,’ she told him, picking with the speed of long practice. ‘He set it up and loved it. He can’t do so much now, though.’

  ‘So it’s down to you.’

  ‘The kids don’t have time. Every now and then I bully them to do some weeding or digging, but they have their own lives. You have no idea how much money it saves us, though. Daisy and Sam raid it every time they come home too, so it helps them.’

  ‘They’re not self-sufficient?’

  ‘Almost.’ He could hear the pride of a parent in her voice. ‘Daisy finished physiotherapy last November. She starts her first job this week. She and her boyfriend have just set up a flat together. He’s as broke as she is, though, so it’s been a struggle. Sam’s just finished an IT degree and he’s been offered a postgrad scholarship. He’s living in at the uni, tutoring to pay expenses. He works in a call centre a couple of nights a week too, so he’s almost off my hands. Chloe and Tom...they have a way to go but the end’s in sight.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘What’s the end in sight for you?’

  ‘To see them all safe.’ She said it solidly, definitely. ‘When Mum died and they were all sent to foster homes...you have no idea how terrified I was. I made a vow then and I’ve kept it.’ She caught herself, no doubt hearing the grim determination behind her words, and looked up and gave him a shamefaced grin. ‘That sounds like it’s been all me and it hasn’t. Gran and Pa have been awesome.’

  ‘But what happens after they’re safe?’ Max asked. ‘What happens to Sunny?’

  She shook her head. ‘Who knows? I haven’t been brave enough to look that far ahead.’

  ‘I think you’re brave enough to do anything.’

  Her colander was full. How fast was she? She took a moment out, split a pod open and ate some peas, then split another and offered it to him. ‘Sometimes I am,’ she agreed. ‘I applied to the best hotel in Sydney for a cleaning job and I can’t tell you how much courage that took. The interview made me quake in my boots but I got it. Regular hours. Union negotiated wages. Meal breaks. I’d been doing casual house cleaning until then and the change was heaven. Taste?’

  He tasted a freshly opened pea, standing in the garden in the small hours of Christmas morning. There were birds everywhere, raucous in the trees above their heads. Sunny had netted the most vulnerable of the crops but he had a feeling they were being watched, in the hope the netting could be breached.

  He didn’t blame the birds. This pea was worth fighting for. He glanced across at the splashes of crimson under the netting and Sunny
saw where he was looking and grinned.

  ‘The strawberries have had a week’s embargo until yesterday too,’ she told him. ‘These are for tonight’s pavlovas, which reminds me, I need to get the pavs into the oven before I need it for the turkey. Can you manage to take the peas inside while I do the watering and let the chooks out? I need to get on.’

  Of course she did. He carried Phoebe and the peas back up to the veranda and then stood and watched as Sunny headed down the path towards the hen house.

  It’d take more than Chloe, he thought. Tom too? And support from Daisy and Sam.

  He needed to knock on a few bedroom doors, he decided, and he needed to do it fast.

  * * *

  Church. Sunny still had nightmares of the year her mother had died, the year the world had seemed irredeemably shattered and her siblings had been cast into the separate paths of foster care. But then the social workers had found Gran and Pa, and miraculously they’d been enfolded with love. That Christmas, for the first time, Gran and Pa had played Santa Claus and there’d been a gift for Sunny.

  She’d stood in church that first Christmas morning and she’d held Gran’s hand and she’d wept. For some reason, every Christmas since then she’d felt the same way.

  Everyone she cared about was with her now. The kids knew how important this was, to her and to Gran and Pa. Pa sat at the end of the pew in his wheelchair. Would he be here next Christmas? The thought made her cringe but she put it away.

  She was here to count her blessings, as she did every Christmas.

  The only problem was, this Christmas she had a distraction—a large one—sitting beside her.

  For, as the family had readied for church, Gran had rounded on Max. ‘We’ve ordered the maxi-taxi to take us. That gives us room for John’s wheelchair so there’s room for you and for Phoebe.’

  ‘Phoebe might cry,’ Max had protested and it was true. She’d been fed again but she was restless.

  ‘And if the lot of us can’t dandle one baby between us there’s something wrong,’ Pa had declared, so now Phoebe was still awake, nestled in his arms but seemingly content, gazing upward as if trying to make sense of this man who was holding her.

  This man sitting beside Sunny.

  They were sitting at the end of the pew, in case Phoebe decided to roar and they had to take her out. The kids were on the far side of Sunny. Gran and Pa were in the pew in front so his wheelchair could sit in the aisle.

  Gran and Pa, holding hands.

  Sunny and Max and baby Phoebe.

  Family.

  Anyone looking at her and Max might think...might think...

  Don’t go there, Sunny thought, as the Christmas sermon stretched on, but how could she not? Fantasy?

  But this was a fantasy. There’d never been time or space for her to think of a love life and, besides, who’d want her?

  She gazed down at her hands, at the lines and calluses formed by years of hard manual work, at the cracked, blunt nails, at the absence of rings. She stretched them out for just a moment and suddenly, astonishingly, Max’s fingers were closing over hers.

  ‘Good hands,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Honourable hands.’

  She should pull away. She should...

  Okay, she didn’t know what she should do. Had he known what she was thinking? How many hands had this man seen that looked like hers? None. She knew it.

  She should tug her hand back from his and the contact would be over. That would be the sensible course, the only course, but she couldn’t quite manage it. His clasp was warm and strong. Good.

  Fantasy enveloped her again for a moment, insidious in its sweetness. To keep sitting here, to feel the peace of this moment, this place, this man...

  The organ murmured and then soared into the introduction of Silent Night.

  It needed only this, she thought wildly. Her favourite carol. Her entire family safe and happy. A billionaire to-die-for. A perfect baby...

  And then the perfect baby opened her mouth and squawked, and Tom on the other side of her noticed where her hand was and dug her hard in the ribs. He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. The congregation was rising to its feet and starting to sing.

  And Sunny tugged her hand from Max. She took the wailing Phoebe from him and propped her on her shoulder and rubbed her back. Phoebe subsided. Sunny looked firmly down at the printed words Tom was holding for her—she needed something to look at rather than Max—and she started to sing too.

  She’d had moments like this before, she told herself. Moments of fantasy. But they were just that—fantasy. She was indeed blessed with her family, so what was she doing dreaming of more?

  And then she realised why Phoebe hadn’t been sleeping and what was behind the wail.

  ‘Phew...’ Tom gasped and Sunny winced.

  ‘I’ll take her,’ Max said and for a moment she almost let him. But the fantasy had her unsettled. She needed to ground herself fast and what better way than a nappy change?

  ‘I’ve agreed to take on responsibilities today,’ she whispered. ‘If I were you I’d soak it up because after Christmas she’s all yours.’

  * * *

  Max didn’t sing. Instead he stood and listened as the music swelled around him. He watched Sunny’s family; they hadn’t realised Sunny had slipped out. Like last night playing basketball... Sunny was out of sight, in the background, working to make them happy.

  She deserved his Christmas gift.

  Would she accept?

  He could only hope.

  * * *

  Max might be pretty much a hermit where Christmas was concerned but he wasn’t completely isolated. He usually emerged from his self-inflicted solitude for Christmas dinner, sharing it with like-minded souls in the restaurant near his apartment. The menu was always stunning, oysters maybe, caviar, turkey with truffle stuffing, an elegant modern take on plum pudding... The wines would be breathtakingly excellent. There’d be exquisite Swiss truffles with coffee, with cognac and the finest of Cuban cigars for those inclined.

  This Christmas dinner was about as far from that as it was possible to be. There was no entrée—just a turkey so big it took two of the boys to carry it to the table. Sausage and herb stuffing, mounds of potato mash, a vast jug of gravy, and bowls of vegetables and salads. There was no elegance—it was a cheerful free-for-all.

  Max found he wasn’t missing his oysters and truffle-stuffing one bit.

  Then there was the pudding and there was no modern take here. ‘I’ve handed the recipe to Sunny now and she’s done us proud,’ Ruby told him, beaming. ‘You’re the guest; you light it.’ So with the family watching—with a certain amount of anxiety—he followed Ruby’s instructions, heating the brandy and then flaming the pudding. They’d pulled the blinds closed and the flames lit the room.

  Then the pudding was taken firmly from him—apparently he might be trusted to light it but only Ruby was going to serve. ‘Cream, ice cream or brandy sauce?’ Ruby asked but the question was met with howls of derision.

  ‘He may live half a world away but the man’s not stupid,’ Sunny declared. ‘Give him all three.’

  So he had all three and came back for more. And Sunny grinned at him as she watched him pour more of the truly wonderful brandy sauce and he thought...

  Um...not. Was the brandy sauce going to his head? There was no reason his thoughts were suddenly wandering in impossible directions.

  ‘And now’s the best part.’ It was Tom, the youngest. ‘Presents! Where’s Phoebe? She has to be included.’

  Phoebe was in the next room, sleeping soundly, but her presence was deemed essential. Sunny brought her in as they headed to the living room—and the Christmas tree. She handed the baby over to Max and he sat and held her as the family swapped gifts.

  These weren’t big gifts
. His cherry liqueur chocolates were the largest offering of all, greeted with stunned delight from Ruby and hoots of laughter from everyone else.

  ‘She always hides them in her knicker drawer,’ Sunny told him. ‘We’ve given her a conundrum. The box is too big.’

  ‘The knickers will have to go,’ Ruby declared, clutching her precious box. ‘And now here’s something for you and Phoebe.’

  For him... He accepted a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with an obviously recycled crimson ribbon.

  Things were getting a bit much. He wasn’t used to this kind of personal. To say he was out of his comfort zone would be putting it mildly.

  ‘Open it,’ Sunny told him and somehow he balanced a sleeping Phoebe while he unfastened the wrapping.

  It was a sock. An old sock, by the look of things, black, with a toe that was almost worn through, but it had been transformed.

  It had embroidered eyes, nose and a wide crimson smile. Great bushy eyebrows were made with brown wool, as was its hair. The two toe ends had been tied to make waggly ears.

  ‘Sunny made all the kids a Mr Sock when they were little and we decided Phoebe needed one too,’ Ruby told him. ‘You can use him to tell her stories. Starting now. Kids are never too young to hear stories.’

  And he glanced at Sunny and caught such an expression...

  A glimmer of tears?

  But the room was suddenly full of laughing conflict.

  ‘My Mr Sock is bigger,’ Tom said proudly.

  ‘Yeah, but my Mr Sock’s pink.’ Daisy gave him a shove. ‘Much better.’

  ‘You’ve all kept your Mr Socks?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t we?’ Sam demanded. ‘Is that the end of the gifts? I hear shortbread calling.’

  ‘There’s something more,’ Max said. He was still watching Sunny. She was on the floor, surrounded by a sea of wrapping paper, misty-eyed, and he thought she looked...

  Yeah, he didn’t understand that either. Why the sight of her should do that twisting thing...

  ‘I have a gift for Sunny,’ he said and got nods of conspiratorial pleasure from everyone except Sunny, who looked confused.