by Annie O'Neil
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both, if that’s what it takes!”
“Amanda, darling—Oh! Sorry, luvvies, I...” Florence had whirled into the kitchen and was mid-about-face when she realized she wasn’t interrupting a romantic tryst. “Matthew? What are you—? Amanda, dear, come here.”
She tugged Amanda toward her while Matthew’s hands dropped to his sides.
“What in heaven’s name is going on? I know I was being a bit of a rascal, inviting your parents here, but...” Florence dropped any pretense of trying to understand the scenario and opted for her old-world upbringing. “Let’s just get this mulled wine out there, shall we? Or a cup of tea? Shall I put the kettle on? Amanda, darling, you are looking awfully pale. I’m so sorry. I know I should’ve told you first—”
“No, Auntie Florence. It’s all right.”
Amanda shook her head, her complexion so pale it made Matthew’s heart ache.
“It wasn’t you—”
“I was trying to ask your bullheaded niece to marry me,” Matthew finally bit out, unable to bear the building tension any longer. “It seems I may have jumped the gun. Or pulled open the wrong advent calendar door. Either way...” He briskly swiped his hands together and rubbed them against the outsides of his thighs. “I’ll be off. Give Tristan a good-night kiss for me, would you?”
He aimed the request at Amanda, knowing his voice dripped with venom.
“If it isn’t too much bother,” he continued. “See you at the hospital no doubt. All the best, Florence.”
He dropped a polite kiss on her soft cheek and gave her arm a squeeze before walking out of the kitchen, grabbing his coat off the wooden stand, and closing the door behind him with a finality that even he believed.
A romance over before it had even begun.
He should have trusted his instinct from the first. He wasn’t the man Amanda wanted. He was damaged goods and destined to be alone.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“TRISTAN’S FATHER?” HER parents repeated in tandem, as if they hadn’t quite heard her.
Amanda nodded, lips pressed tight, her eyes anxiously darting up to the ceiling even though she knew Tristan was listening to story after story from Auntie Florence.
“Well, that’s wonderful, darling, isn’t it?” her mother asked.
“What is? Now that you know Tristan’s father is rich? Titled? Which is it? Or is it that he’s a doctor as well as being Sir Matthew Chase.”
She knew she was lashing out at her parents when she should be pummeling herself. And each of the things she was naming were superficial trappings. It wasn’t the title, the job or the money that interested her. It was the man.
Matthew Chase.
With his blue eyes and his dark chocolate hair and his surprisingly warm heart she knew she’d only just seen glimpses of him, with so much more yet to reveal. Each and every centimeter of him was...perfect. She loved him. And she’d just sent him away.
Just saying his name filled her with the deep ache of loss. How had she made such a mess of things? Again.
The answer was a bitter pill to swallow. She always ruined things. It was why she’d sent him away. She’d been expediting the inevitable.
But why did it feel so bone-achingly awful? As if she’d cut off a limb from her own body?
“Amanda, I wasn’t saying any of those things,” her mother bit out. “We are just delighted to know that Tristan’s father is in his life.”
“Well, he isn’t anymore,” Amanda retorted, vividly aware that she was fast-track regressing to being the petulant teenager her parents had been so thrilled to send away to boarding school.
She closed her eyes against her mother and father’s shocked expression and willed herself to be still...waiting...listening...finally hearing the steady thump-thump of her heart. She wasn’t that petulant teen anymore. It was time to be the woman she’d always hoped she would become.
“For today, you mean? Has he left to go to the hospital?” her mother prompted.
“No. Not exactly.”
“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?” her father asked, his eyes narrowing in an all too familiar echo of her childhood.
“I mean he was here to spend time with Tristan. With both of us. And...and now he isn’t.”
She dropped her head into her hands and stemmed the deep, low moan building in her gut.
What had she done?
She knew this collision of past and present had been a long time coming—she just hadn’t expected it to come with a proposal! How she had found the power to say no was beyond her. A no that was beginning to make less and less sense with each passing minute.
Lifting her head and forcing herself to face her parents—look them straight in the eye—she took the step she knew she had needed to take for a while. Years, really.
“Mum? Dad? I need your help.”
She held up her hands, wanting to finish what she was saying before they leapt in with their usual admonishments about not managing her money properly, getting pregnant without being in a solid relationship.
“I know there are a lot of ways I could have conducted myself—over my whole life, really—that would have made you more proud of me...” She held her hands out to her sides. “But this is who I am. I am filled with flaws. I act impetuously. And my actions...they have ramifications. Believe me when I say I have been carrying around the guilt about John’s death for years. I know it’s my fault—”
“Amanda, love...” her father gently cut in. “That’s not true.”
“Of course it’s true! I told him he needed to pull his weight. To sign up for another tour. It’s my fault he went back to Afghanistan. It’s my fault he’s dead.”
“No.” Both her parents were shaking their heads now, their expressions soft. Compassionate, even. “Any disagreement the two of you were having didn’t back John into a corner.”
Amanda’s brow crinkled. “What are you talking about? How would you know?”
“We met with John’s parents a few years ago,” her mother explained. “When we heard what had happened in Afghanistan.”
“They met with you?”
“Yes, well...” Her father’s lips thinned, then parted as he continued. “We offered to help pay for John’s funeral and were refused. Emotions were running high, as you can imagine. So we thought we would wait a while and then approach them to see if there was a charity we could donate to in John’s name.”
Amanda stared wide-eyed at her parents. Had they tried to make amends for a man’s death with money?
“Giles, just go on and tell her everything.”
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me any of this,” Amanda bristled. “It was thirteen years ago. Why come to me now and dig up the past? An incredibly painful past I have worked hard to put behind me.”
She looked between her parents until her father finally laced his hands together between his knees and began speaking.
“What we’re trying to say, Amanda, is that you aren’t the only one who has made their share of mistakes. We’re all muddling through, and with things so—so tense between us...”
Her mother pressed a tissue to her lips, trying to stem a small sob.
Her father’s expression turned remorseful. “We haven’t exactly been on talking terms, have we, darling?”
Amanda squirmed at the term of endearment. Virtually ten years of being ostracized by them had taken its toll.
It would be so easy to jump up from the sofa and walk out on them the way they had walked out on her when she’d told them she was pregnant with Tristan.
But there was another, louder side of her heart that badly wanted to be her parents’ little girl again. Their darling daughter. If she could overcome those years of hurt in an instant she would run across to
the sofa, drop to her knees and hug them both, weep and sob for sending Matthew away and, while she was at it, weep some more for all the mistakes she had made before.
But they weren’t that type of family.
So she did what she always did—shook her head and braced herself for the latest catalogue of disappointments she’d weighted the Wakehurst history books with this time.
Her father gruffly cleared his throat and began again. “As I said, we tracked John’s parents down, hoping to make a donation to a charity in his name—”
“What? To make amends for your daughter sending him to his death?”
Amanda hated herself for sounding so bitter about the gesture—so angry—but she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was the one who had to accept responsibility for John’s death. Not have her parents sneaking around salving wounds in the only way they knew how—with money.
“Well, no, as it turns out. It wasn’t that at all.”
Amanda scrubbed her hands through her hair. “What do you mean?”
“John had always been signed up to go on another tour.”
Ice ran through her veins. That hadn’t been what he’d said. He’d blamed it all on her. On the trust fund drying up. Her refusal to leave medical school.
Her father said, “He didn’t want to return, which was fairly understandable, but his parents insisted he make good on his commitment to the military. To honor his promises.”
Amanda’s whole body began to hum with discord. “You mean he didn’t go solely because of me?”
“According to his parents, he finally agreed to go because he was ashamed of the way he’d treated you and didn’t know how to come clean, as it were.” Her father looked down at his hands again before continuing. “He sent them a letter when he arrived in Afghanistan. It explained everything.”
“What did it say?” Amanda managed to choke out the words, covering her face with her hands as if that would shield her from the truth.
For the last thirteen years she’d been living with the guilt of John’s death. She had believed that she was responsible for a soldier going into battle against his will.
“He took responsibility for everything.”
Amanda sat upright, her hands falling to her lap, her jaw following in their wake. “What do you mean, ‘everything’? What could he have taken responsibility for?”
“He said he and his army mates had overheard you and your friends having dinner when you were in Las Vegas. It had become clear to them that the three of you were comfortably off and that your positions in society were...were more fortunate than his own.”
Her father swiped a hand across his face and his wife reached out to put her hand on his knee.
“What is it?” Amanda demanded. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“It was a dare!” her father blurted. “The whole thing was a dare. The wedding...trying to move up a social tier at your expense...the entire thing was a bet.”
Amanda sat entirely motionless, replaying the words she’d swear she’d just heard coming out of her father’s mouth.
A dare?
Amanda was speechless. She’d never really known what feeling completely stunned felt like until now. Maybe thunderstruck was a better word.
Slowly at first, then at a rate of knots she could barely keep up with, everything shifted into place.
From the moment they’d landed back in the UK John had been strange. He’d gone from being completely adoring to barely touching her—except in that one violent exchange. If his parents had known all along what he’d done... No wonder they had been awkward around her.
All these years she’d thought they had been blaming her, when they had actually been blaming their son! Trying to get him to come clean. How awful for them to lose him to war before they’d had a chance to make their peace. No wonder...
Her heart softened as she looked across the room to the sofa where her parents sat, their expressions anxious, their hands woven together as if sending energy from one to the other. Her parents had been trying to help her all along. Even if it had been impossible to divine as they muddled on in their own awkward, gentrified, super-British stiff-upper-lip way.
“So that’s why you hosted the SoS event?” Amanda finally said.
They nodded in tandem. It struck Amanda how much of a unit her parents were. There wasn’t a slip of paper thin enough to wedge between the pair of them. Not physically, of course, but they were the most happily, solidly married couple she had ever known.
Her mother crossed and then re-crossed her legs as she went through the motions of choosing how to tell the next part of the story.
“We were going to tell you after the event...a day or so later. But then you disappeared, and we thought being amongst all those soldiers had made everything worse instead of better, so we thought we’d leave it a couple of weeks. Then when we did meet and heard your news...”
“You didn’t know how to tell me that the last ten years of my life had been a joke?” Amanda finished for her.
Her mother nodded, tears cascading down her cheeks. “We’re so sorry, Amanda. We responded so poorly, and we know how passionate you can be—”
“You mean foolhardy?” Amanda interjected.
“No. Of course not. You give your full heart to everything. First medicine and now Tristan.”
“How do you know anything about Tristan?” Amanda’s back stiffened defensively.
“Florence has been keeping us up to date with everything at our request. She’s very protective of you, but your father can’t get enough pictures of Tristan. With those blue eyes he’s so like—” She stopped abruptly and pressed her fingers to her mouth.
“So like his father?” Amanda finished for her.
Her mother nodded. “If you’d like to try again...if you can trust us...we’d love so very much to try and make up for lost time.”
“With Tristan?”
“With both of you.” Her father opened his hands to Amanda. “We know we have made a complete and utter hash of being your parents. But if you’re willing to give us another chance we’d love to try and make up for it.”
“How do you feel about starting right now?”
Quizzical expressions shot on to her parents’ faces as they watched their daughter jump from the sofa.
“Would you be all right to help Auntie Florence with Tristan? I think I’ve made one of the worst mistakes of my life and I need to go fix it.”
“So...you’re—you’re happy for us to be with Tristan? Be in your home?”
“Of course I am!” Amanda crossed to them and gave them each a kiss on the cheek. “I know it’s going to take some getting used to—for all of us—but if I don’t go now I might turn the rest of my life into one more cruel joke. I’ve got to go. For Tristan.”
Her parents pulled her into a tight hug, then ushered her out into the corridor, insisting she bundle herself up against the thick snowfall blanketing London.
“Where are you going?” her father asked as she pulled the door open.
“To the hospital!”
And with her heart thumping against her rib cage she ran out through the door and across the square to find the one man she prayed would find a way to forgive her. To make this Christmas miracle complete.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“DR. CHASE, WE really are properly staffed tonight.” Dr. McBride stood, arms crossed, as if protecting the assignment board from Matthew. “Thank you for seeing to the last couple of patients, but I think your energies might be better spent...” he looked up to the ceiling to search for words “...finding your Zen.”
“Rubbish. I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means...” Dr. McBride reinserted himself between Matthew and the assignment board “...you look like you ne
ed a day off.”
“When’s the last time you had a day off? You’re always knackered.”
Matthew knew he was being childish. Knew Dr. McBride was making the best call both for the rest of the staff and the patients. He’d stormed into the hospital like a wounded pterodactyl, prepared to blame the world for the heart that was breaking into pieces inside his chest.
He had yanked on a white coat. Insisted on seeing the worst cases. Elbowed in on cases already being tended to. He was acting like a first-class boor. And none of it was making him feel any better.
“Things are running smoothly tonight,” Dr. McBride continued gently. “We’ll be all right if you head home.”
Home? As if he knew where that was. Home was with Amanda and Tristan. He knew it was complete madness, but being with them had meant feeling whole again for the very first time since Charlie had died. Like a man. A father. Someone worthy of love. It was devastating him that he would never feel that way again.
He stared at Dr. McBride willing him to have mercy on a man who wanted, needed, to prove his worth.
“Since when does this hospital run smoothly?” Matthew shifted from side to side, trying to get a glimpse at the board.
“Since you and Dr. Wakehurst came to work here,” Dr. McBride answered kindly.
He was obviously reading Matthew’s high-octane vibes for what they were. A man with energy to burn, minus the exacting focus he needed to attend to patients. Minus the empathy, more like. The care. The compassion he’d vowed to give each and every patient the day he had decided to become a doctor. The day his brother had died.
“It’s almost Christmas Eve, Dr. Chase. That’s when things tend to get crazier. I really do suggest you go on home—or why not go out and do some Christmas shopping?”
The words struck Matthew like a dagger in the chest. His brother would be alive today if his parents hadn’t gone ruddy Christmas shopping. Or if he’d listened when his brother had asked him to stop playing video games for a few minutes. To talk.
Why hadn’t he taken the time?
Dr. McBride reached out a hand as if to turn Matthew toward the exit. Why was everyone blocking his efforts to help? All he wanted to do was work, for heaven’s sake!