Christmas Down Under: Six Sexy New Zealand & Australian Christmas Romances

by Rosalind James

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “You’re doing what your family approves of, but it’s not what you want. And I’m doing what I want, and nobody approves of it. Neither of us is exactly matched up, are we? I thought college was supposed to be this carefree time when you explored all your options.”

  “You’d have to work a bit less for that to be true, in your case,” Jeremy pointed out. “Unless you really wanted to explore the option of working in the dining hall. Did you mention the job to your Mum yet?”

  “No,” Jenna admitted. “I can’t tell which I’m dreading more, that she’ll be upset that I’ll be gone all summer, or that she won’t be.”

  She got her answer soon after Jeremy left.

  “Oh. Hi.” Sherri answered the phone unenthusiastically. “I’m on my way out. What’s going on?”

  That wasn’t a very promising beginning. “Just wanted to tell you, Mom, I got a summer job, a good one, as a camp counselor in Colorado. It pays pretty well, because some of the kids have special needs. But it means I’ll be gone all summer. Starting in early June, as soon as school lets out.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jenna heard her mother inhale, then blow the smoke out again. “I don’t know why you’d want to work with a bunch of retarded kids. It sounds disgusting. But I was going to call you anyway. Can you come get the rest of your stuff? Because I think Dwight’s going to ask me to move in with him, and I don’t want to store all your shit.”

  “Uh … sure.” Jenna wondered why she had even considered the possibility of her mother’s being upset at her absence. She certainly hadn’t seemed to be pining at the loss of her company so far.

  “Call before you come by, though,” Sherri continued. “Because I haven’t exactly told him about you. He thinks I’m thirty-three. It’d be a little hard to explain you. He’s not going to believe I had a baby when I was thirteen.”

  “All right.” Jenna felt the familiar disappointment seeping through her. She shouldn’t expect any more, after all these years. But being asked to disappear herself from her mother’s life … surely that was a new low. “Which one is Dwight again?” she asked.

  Sherri sighed impatiently. “The dealer. He deals twenty-one at Caesar’s. He makes plenty, and he’s not shy about spreading it around, especially to people he likes. And believe me, I’ve made sure he likes me. I don’t want to screw it up now. I’m thinking that if I handle this right, he just might propose.”

  “That’s great, Mom.”

  “How’s your boyfriend, anyway?” Sherri asked without much interest. “That what’s his name? You still hanging onto him?”

  “Jeremy,” Jenna reminded her. “And yes, we’re still together. He’s going back to New Zealand for the break, though.”

  “And you couldn’t get him to take you with him?” her mother asked.

  “He did ask, actually. But I can’t afford it, you know that. The fare, and not working.”

  “Don’t say that like it’s my fault,” Sherri told her sharply. “I’ve sacrificed plenty for you. I raised you, didn’t I? And if you think it was easy, you’re kidding yourself. I had dreams once too, you know.”

  “I wasn’t saying that, Mom,” Jenna sighed. “Just that I can’t afford to go.”

  “His family’s loaded, though,” her mother complained. “Why didn’t you hint around, get him to pay for it? Sometimes I can’t even believe that you’re my daughter. It’s like they switched babies on me. I could’ve got that trip out of any man by the time I was sixteen.”

  “Yeah.” Jenna wished she had a snappy comeback, but, as usual, she couldn’t think of anything to say, anything that would make her feel stronger, more powerful, let alone impress her mother. “Anyway. I just wanted to tell you.”

  “Come get that stuff,” Sherri reminded her. “But call first. I gotta go.”

  “Bye.” Jenna put the phone down. Good thing she did have that job. Because it looked like whatever had remained of her childhood had just ended.

  Someday, she promised herself, feeling hollow inside. Someday she’d have her own family. And when she did, she was going to do it differently. She was going to do it right.

  Finding Nemo

  “Can Caitlin spend the night tomorrow?” Sophie asked when Jenna arrived at school on Thursday afternoon. “Please, Jenna? We want to make more jewelry.”

  Jenna looked at the beseeching little faces. “It’s all right with me,” she said. “We’ll have to ask Caitlin’s mum, though.”

  “It’ll be OK with my mum,” Caitlin said confidently. “She loves me to have sleepovers. She says it gets me out of her hair.” Seeing her mother approaching with Ethan by the hand, she called out, “Mum! Can I sleep over with Sophie tomorrow night?”

  “You need to wait to be invited,” Siobhan chided. “Sorry, Jenna,” she apologized. “My offspring have no manners, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s all right,” Jenna smiled. “I was just inviting her. We request the favor of Caitlin’s company tomorrow night. And Ethan’s as well,” she decided, “if you think he’s old enough. He and Harry have been getting on so famously, and I know Harry’d enjoy it.”

  “Yeh,” Harry agreed. “We could make a jungle scene, Ethan!”

  “What do you think?” Jenna asked. “Date night?”

  “Date night sounds choice,” Siobhan said. “If I remember how. I’ll probably start cutting Declan’s meat for him. Are you sure it won’t be too much, though, to have both of them?”

  “You’d be doing me a favor,” Jenna assured her. “Giving them both some company. Finn’s gone for twelve days, and I’m going to get a little nuts.”

  “And the solution for that is two more kids?” Siobhan asked dubiously.

  “Variety,” Jenna said. “And it’ll keep them entertained too. Keep me from having to play Candyland.”

  “You can’t put a price on that,” Siobhan agreed.

  “There is a catch, though,” Jenna warned. “You have to have a cup of tea and a chat with me when you come to get them Saturday morning, give me some adult companionship.”

  “Think I could fit that in,” Siobhan said. “Help me recover from my big night out. Wait till I tell Declan. He’s going to be chuffed.”

  * * *

  “Mum! We made cookies!” Ethan ran to his mother on Saturday morning and gave her a hug.

  “How’d he do?” Siobhan asked Jenna as they went into the kitchen after promising Ethan and Harry that they could finish building their jungle.

  “Great. We watched Finding Nemo last night, and we made cookies this morning.” Jenna handed Siobhan a container of still-warm peanut butter cookies laced with chocolate chunks. “Some to take home.”

  “Just what my waistline doesn’t need,” Siobhan said ruefully. “Declan’ll be rapt, though. Finding Nemo, eh.”

  “Sophie’s favorite, for obvious reasons. She has a bit of a Daddy thing.”

  “Understandable, with no mum.” Siobhan watched Jenna pour tea into her cup, added milk and sugar, and took a peanut butter cookie without too much coaxing.

  “Yeah,” Jenna sighed. “Makes this long road trip tough for her. Having Caitlin over helped a lot. And we’ll watch him play tonight. That always makes her feel better. As long as he doesn’t get injured, that is.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Siobhan said. “Seeing your dad on TV every week. A bit weird.”

  “It’s what they’ve grown up with,” Jenna pointed out. “It’s normal to them. He calls, too, almost every night. He’s really good about that. But seeing him play is the best. Gives Sophie something to discuss with him, too. You should hear her,” she chuckled. “I don’t even know what she’s talking about, half the time.”

  “I wouldn’t know, either,” Siobhan said. “Declan tries to explain all the rules to me, but I’m not that interested. Just like watching the boys in their little shorts.” They laughed together. “There’re some fit fellas on the All Blacks. Finn amongst them.”

  “Mmm,” Jenna agreed.

  “D
oes he have a girlfriend now?” Siobhan asked curiously.

  “Sorry,” Jenna said with a smile. “My employer, you know. I can’t really talk about that.”

  “Course,” Siobhan said with disappointment. “No rules about the other blokes, though, are there? You could give me a bit of gossip about somebody else. That’d do me.”

  “Finn doesn’t tell me anything interesting that way, alas. If you want to know who’s got a separated shoulder, I’m your woman. But as to who’s separated from his wife …” Jenna shrugged. “Can’t help you.”

  “Oh, well,” Siobhan said. “Nothing quite as interesting anyway, since Drew Callahan got married and Koti James got himself engaged. Wedding day coming up, I hear. That’ll be a national day of mourning for the female population.”

  “Why is that, though?” Jenna wondered. “Why do we feel disappointed when somebody like that gets married? I mean, did you or I really think we were going to sleep with Koti James in this lifetime? Have we really lost anything?”

  “Lost the dream,” Siobhan sighed. “Now I’ll have to kill off his wife in my mind before I get horizontal with him. So much work.”

  “Homicide does take the edge off that sexual fantasy,” Jenna laughed.

  “I don’t really want to do it,” Siobhan said. “Shag him, I mean. I love Declan. I just …” She sighed again. “It’d just be nice to touch a body like that, once. Sad to think I’ll never have the chance. Think Finn would let me come over and feel his chest for a bit? Purely in the spirit of scientific inquiry?”

  “No,” Jenna said through her giggles. “I don’t think that’d go over well. It’d make the school drop-off so awkward afterwards, too.”

  “He could auction it off,” Siobhan said. “At the next school fundraiser. That’d raise a fair sum amongst the mums.”

  “Also never happening. I guarantee it.”

  “Pity. Have to keep dreaming,” Siobhan decided.

  “So what does all this mean?” Jenna asked, wiping her eyes. “Good date last night? Or bad date?”

  “Good date,” Siobhan smiled. “Definitely. Makes me saucy.”

  “I guess that means you’ll be up for the kids coming over again. I wouldn’t mind having them next Friday as well, since Finn won’t be back till that Sunday. And Sophie’s soccer game will be in the afternoon again, next Saturday.”

  “If you’re sure,” Siobhan said doubtfully. “Can’t I reciprocate, next time? Wouldn’t you like a night off yourself?”

  “Nyree’s cousin Miriam will come on Monday, give me my day,” Jenna assured her. “That’s all I need. With the kids in school and without Finn here to cook for, there really isn’t that much to do. But we could all use some company. And I’ll take a rain check on the sleepover at your house. Who knows, some other road trip, I might need it.”

  “Let’s make it a date, then,” Siobhan decided. “Friday night sleepover. And let’s have coffee one morning next week too. Tuesday suit you?”

  “I’d love to,” Jenna said with pleasure. “On both counts.”

  Well, look at that, she thought as she and the kids waved goodbye fifteen minutes later. Nanny or not, she’d made a new friend. The best kind, one who made her laugh. Who would have guessed?

  Jenna juggled the pile of clothes, pushed the door open with her backside. Sophie looked up fast from her cross-legged position on the bed, then slammed shut the pink, bejeweled notebook she’d been writing in and shoved it under her pillow together with her pen.

  “Sorry,” Jenna said calmly, taking the armload of clothes across to Sophie’s dresser and setting it down on top. “I didn’t realize you were in here, or I’d have knocked. Somehow.” She smiled. “Maybe I wouldn’t have. I need to grow another hand. Can you help me put these away, please?”

  Sophie got off her bed reluctantly and came across to lend a hand. Jenna saw her cast a glance back at her notebook, one corner still showing under the pillow.

  “You know,” she told the little girl, opening the top drawer and handing Sophie her neatly folded underwear, “I think it’s a wonderful thing to have a private book, a place to write your private thoughts.”

  She saw Sophie’s eyes fly to hers, continued in a conversational tone. “Of course, private means that nobody else is allowed to read what you write. Unless you invite them to, of course.”

  She opened the next drawer, gave Sophie a stack of shirts. “Which is why,” she finished, “I’d never read anybody’s private notebook.”

  “You wouldn’t?” Sophie asked her doubtfully.

  “Nope. I sure wouldn’t. I wish I’d had the good idea of getting a notebook like that, when I was seven or eight, say. It would have helped when I was mad at my mum, that’s for sure, to have a place to write it down.”

  She put away Sophie’s socks, refolded a pair of jeans and added them to the bottom drawer, giving a quick tidy to the contents while she was at it.

  “You were mad at your mum? Really?”

  “I sure was,” Jenna leaned back against the dresser to look down at Sophie. “Lots of times. When she hurt my feelings, or I thought she wasn’t paying enough attention to me.”

  “Even though she cooked you dinner, and washed your clothes, and everything?” Sophie asked. “You were still mad sometimes?”

  Ah. “Even though. I don’t think that was really so ungrateful, do you? I mean, I did know that she did those things. And I helped as much as I could. At least I hope so. But I couldn’t help my feelings, could I? It would have been nice to have a notebook, a safe place to talk about it. Like you. When did you start writing in yours?”

  “My birthday. Last year. I always made lists. When I was little, I mean.”

  Jenna fought back the smile that tried to creep out at that, listened as Sophie went on. “Once I learnt to write, in Year One. That’s why Daddy gave me the notebook. He said it would be a place for my lists. And my drawings, and anything I wanted to put in it. He said it was special, just for me.”

  “That was a very thoughtful present,” Jenna told her. “Your dad’s pretty special himself, isn’t he?”

  Sophie nodded emphatically. “He’s not like other dads. Nobody else’s dad is an All Black. Nobody at my school.”

  “That’s a big honor, I know,” Jenna agreed. “But it must be lonesome sometimes for you too.”

  “He has to go, though,” Sophie argued. “That’s his job.”

  “It is. But it can still be hard, can’t it? I’ll bet it’s hard for him too, to leave you and Harry.”

  “He says he misses us,” Sophie said in a small voice.

  “I know he does,” Jenna said. “He calls you just about every night, I know that. I’ll bet he needs to hear your voice as much as you need to hear his.”

  “D’you really think so?”

  “I really do. You can ask him on Sunday, when he comes home. But I’ll bet he says yes. And,” she said briskly, straightening up again, “you’ve been in your room since you got home from school. I could use a hand with dinner. Do you think you could come set the table for me? I could use the company, to tell you the truth.”

  “OK. I can help.”

  “Thanks.” Jenna smiled down at her, rested a hand briefly on the top of her head. “Let’s go get to it, then. We can plan what we’ll do, tomorrow night when Caitlin and Ethan come over. You can help me make a menu. We’ll make a list.”

  * * *

  “So good to be back.” Finn stretched his long legs out under the kitchen table on Sunday evening and sighed. “Long time. Long journey.”

  “Your internal clock must be completely out of whack,” Jenna said. “More than twelve hours’ difference. Does it feel like breakfast time?”

  “It does. And strangely enough, I’m hungry.”

  “I kind of anticipated that. I made a Greek lasagna for tonight. Not exactly breakfast food, but I thought it might be satisfying for the day after a game. Give me forty-five minutes, OK?”

  “Choice,” he said.

&n
bsp; “Sorry you lost, Dad,” Sophie said, coming up to stand next to him.

  He put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Even the ABs lose now and then, darling. We did our best, but some days even that isn’t enough. The Springboks were in form, and we weren’t quite clicking.”

  “I thought the ref robbed you,” Sophie said stoutly. “He totally missed that knock-on by Franck. They shouldn’t’ve had that last try.”

  “Nah. Can’t go blaming the ref. It goes one way as often as it goes the other. Just have to chuck it into the loss column and let it motivate you for next time.”

  Jenna paused in her salad preparations at the sound of a phone ringing. Hers, she realized. She wiped her hands on a tea towel and picked it up. Jeremy’s number leapt out at her from the screen. It had been more than a year since she’d seen those digits, but there was no way of mistaking them.

  “Hello?” She moved out of the room as she spoke. She had a feeling that this wasn’t going to be short.

  “Jenna.” Jeremy’s familiar voice, once so dear to her, sounded strained. “How’re you going?”

  “I’m fine. What can I do for you?”

  He sighed. “You still haven’t forgiven me. Wish we could move past this.”

  “I’m working on it. But it’s not easy. I’m assuming there’s a reason you called. Is it to do with the dissolution?”

  “Yeh. The two years are up on the tenth of September.”

  “Yes,” she couldn’t help pointing out. “I do recall that date.”

  “Yeh. Anyway. I’d like to speed up the process a bit. Which we can do, if we appear in Family Court instead of applying through the post. Would you be able to do that? I’ll schedule it at your convenience, of course, and my lawyer will prepare all the paperwork.”

  “And the difference is, what? I’d assumed we’d just send in our petition in the normal way.”

  “If you do it in court, it takes effect immediately. We’d be done. Walk out with our marriage dissolved, able to move on.”

  “Ah. Move on to what?”

  “Marriage,” he explained, sounding a little shamefaced. “But it’d be better for you too,” he hastened to point out. “You can’t have enjoyed these past years either, waiting to make it official. Wouldn’t it be good to have it done and get on with your life?”