White Christmas For The Single Mom (Christmas Miracles In Maternity #3)

by Susanne Hampton

  She had no idea how he could be so cold but she made a promise to herself as she heard his office door close.

  She would never trust her instincts where men were concerned.

  And she would never speak to Charlie Warren again. Although she doubted she would ever stop thinking about him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IT WAS EARLY Monday morning when Juliet awoke. The sky was overcast and threatening to rain down on the still-damp earth. While she knew she had so much to be grateful for, it still didn’t lessen the pain in her heart. But just like the dismal weather, it too would subside in time, she reminded herself. But how much time that would take she didn’t know. Sitting in bed with Bea still sound asleep beside her, she thought back over the week since they’d arrived. So much had happened. The rushed journey over was probably the least eventful.

  Bea’s pink cast took her attention and she remembered the sinking feeling when she saw her fall to the snow. Instinctively, sitting in the warmth of her bed, with her little girl safely beside her, she still dropped her head into her hands. That fleeting but very real fear that something had happened to her daughter had been the worst feeling in the world.

  And how she felt as she thought about Charlie, she accepted, was the second to worst feeling.

  Losing him, after only having him for one night, brought sadness to her every thought. She had been stupid to believe there could be more. She had fallen into bed with a man once again without thinking.

  Then she shifted her shoulders and lifted her chin. It wasn’t quite like that, she had to admit to herself. Charlie was not just any man. He was different. Charlie never lied to her, like Brad. He didn’t scheme, like Bea’s father. He had never hidden the fact he liked his life the way it was. Alone. But Juliet had thought she could change that. And his clear affection for her daughter had convinced her that he was ready to open his heart to love.

  But he wasn’t.

  Both of them were wrong.

  She wasn’t sure what she would do. Extending her contract with Teddy’s was yet to be negotiated so she still had the option of returning home. Or perhaps going on a river cruise with her parents, she thought wryly.

  In the jumble of thoughts, she decided to get up and make some tea and let Bea sleep in a little longer. She tiptoed down the passageway into the kitchen and put on the kettle. She couldn’t let herself fall to pieces. Bea deserved better. She was too young to witness her mother’s heartbreak. Juliet’s tears would have to wait until the middle of the night, when she could cry alone and wish for what might have been.

  Looking at the clock, she realised it was later than she had thought. It was almost nine. Jet lag, she assumed, had finally taken its toll on her parents. That was for the best, she thought as she sat in her pyjamas and robe, holding the steaming cup of tea at the kitchen table. Her socked feet were inside her slippers.

  She thought she heard a car, but presumed it was the neighbours or local traffic passing by. It wasn’t the motorbike she wanted to hear. Biting her lip, and trying to hold back the tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks, she accepted that she would never hear Charlie’s motorbike in her driveway.

  A rustling and thumping suddenly began. And it seemed to get louder. Pulling back her kitchen curtains, to look out of her window into the neighbour’s driveway, Juliet couldn’t see anything. It was the oddest sound. Nothing she could really discern so she sat back down and sipped her tea. While some said tea solved everything, she doubted it would come close to resolving her problems.

  The noise changed to heavy footsteps. And they were outside her house. She crossed the wooden floorboards to the front door expecting a deliveryman. She tugged her dressing gown up around her neck and braced herself for the inevitable gust of cold air as she opened the door.

  But it wasn’t a delivery man.

  It was Charlie.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Her voice was not welcoming. She was hurt and angry and disappointed and more confused than ever. And the reason for her tumultuous emotions was standing on her doorstep.

  ‘I brought the Christmas tree I promised Bea.’

  Juliet eyed him suspiciously as she looked to the side of the house where the six-foot tree was leaning against the wall. Snow was covering the deep green branches that had been tied up with rope.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, as I said, I promised to do it. I won’t let Bea down.’

  But you would let me down, she thought. ‘That’s not what you told me,’ she spat back. ‘I’m heading off today with my father to collect one so you can take that one back. I don’t want a tree or anything from you.’

  Charlie didn’t flinch. ‘I know you’re upset with me—’

  ‘And does that surprise you?’ she cut in angrily.

  Charlie looked down at his snow-covered boots for a moment before he raised his gaze back to her. ‘Not at all. I deserve your anger. I behaved terribly. And I want to make it up to you. Bringing you the tree is just the start...’

  ‘But how did it get here?’ she interrupted. She hadn’t heard his motorbike and there was no delivery van visible outside.

  ‘I brought it here.’

  Juliet stepped onto the freezing cold tiles of the front porch.

  ‘How?’

  Charlie paused for a moment before he turned and looked over his shoulder. ‘On the roof of the car. I tied it to the roof rack.’

  ‘But you don’t drive. You haven’t driven since the accident. I don’t understand.’

  Charlie, momentarily and in deep thought, closed his eyes. When he opened them seconds later he spoke. ‘I had to drive. They couldn’t deliver the tree.’

  Juliet said nothing.

  ‘I borrowed the car from the Christmas tree farm owner.’

  ‘How long since you’ve driven?’

  Charlie looked into Juliet’s eyes in silence for a moment. ‘I haven’t climbed into a car...since the accident. Not to drive or be a passenger. This is the first time in two years I’ve been behind the wheel. I had no choice but to drive because I couldn’t let Bea down.’

  ‘Thank you for the tree. I’ll get my father to help me in with it later,’ she said as she stepped back inside and began to close the door.

  Without warning, Charlie’s boot stopped it closing. ‘There’s more. We need to talk.’

  Juliet shook her head. ‘No, Charlie, we’ve said everything there is to say. I know how you feel. I know you like living alone. I get it. I don’t agree but I accept that it’s your choice and not mine. So let’s leave it at that. But thank you very much for the tree. Bea will love it.’

  ‘Please, Juliet. Give me five minutes. This is not just about Bea. I won’t ever let you down again, if you’ll let me make it up to you.’

  She looked at his handsome face, his stunning eyes that were pleading with her, but she couldn’t let him stay. She needed space to heal and listening to his reasons, his justification for being so cold, would not help her to shut him out for ever. He needed to leave before she could not control her need to stroke the stubble on his chin with her fingers, before she reached up to kiss his tender lips with hers the way she had that night.

  ‘I’m busy, Charlie.’ Her voice was cold but her heart was still warm and she wished it were otherwise.

  ‘It’s nine in the morning and I know you don’t start until one today.’ He moved his foot free. She could shut the door but he hoped with all of his heart she wouldn’t. ‘Please don’t close the door on us. Not without hearing me out.’

  ‘Why, Charlie? We’ve said everything there is to say. You want to spend your life living in regret. Living something you can’t change. You can’t bring your wife back and I don’t want to talk about it any more. I can’t compete with the woman you lost. I’m alive and I wanted to be there for you but y
ou threw me away. I have my pride and I have my daughter. And you can have your lonely existence.’

  ‘I never threw you away. I wanted you to walk away before I hurt you.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have thought about that before you invited me to stay the night,’ she argued. ‘You like being alone and I was just for one night. But that’s not who I am. I want something more, something you can’t offer. So just stay in your glorious house by yourself. It’s how you like it.’

  ‘It’s not. But it took you coming into my life to make me realise that.’

  Juliet frowned and began to shiver. The cold morning air had finally cut through her thick dressing gown and pyjamas and she felt chilled to the bone.

  ‘Can we go inside?’ he asked, aware that she was not coping in the cold.

  ‘No,’ she replied flatly. ‘Everyone’s sleeping and I don’t want them to know about what happened between us. It’s over and done and they do not need to be any the wiser that their daughter made another mistake.’

  ‘It wasn’t a mistake.’

  ‘I disagree. I think me sleeping with you was a mammoth mistake. You were almost morose when we woke. I could see you didn’t want me there with you.’

  ‘I asked you to stay. I wanted you next to me.’

  ‘Yes, maybe you did that night, but in your heart you knew it would be over when the sun came up.’ Juliet began to shake from the bitter cold...and her breaking heart. ‘I just wish you’d never invited me over in the first place. I wish I’d never stayed.’

  ‘So you regret making love to me? Do you think falling into my bed and into my arms was the biggest mistake you could have made? Because I don’t. It’s just taken me time to work it out in my head. And my heart.’

  Juliet was angry but she couldn’t lie. She didn’t regret making love to Charlie. All she regretted was allowing herself to fall in love with him. ‘I don’t understand your question. Why are you wanting to torture me? I haven’t wanted to sleep with anyone in more than four years and then I make this huge error in judgement and believe that you’re different, that perhaps you’re looking for something more, but I was wrong.’

  ‘You weren’t wrong.’ He pulled off his heavy jacket and gently placed it on her shoulders.

  ‘You’ll freeze,’ she said, attempting to give it back as he stood in a jumper and shirt. The air was misty and damp, the ground outside covered with a fresh layer of snow.

  His strong hands remained resting lightly on her shoulders as he refused to take back the jacket. ‘I’m warm-blooded enough to survive while you hear me out.’

  Juliet hated the fact that she couldn’t argue that fact. Charlie had been warm-blooded enough the night they’d spent together to keep her fire burning into the early hours. She also hated that while his coat was heavy it felt good to have it wrapped around her. His scent, the warmth of the lambswool lining that he had heated only moments before. It felt as if it were all she would ever need but she knew it wasn’t hers to keep. Because he wasn’t hers to keep.

  ‘Just let me say a few things and then if you want me to go, I will.’

  ‘Just go now—’

  ‘I can’t and I won’t. Not without telling you how I feel. How I’ve felt since I first laid eyes on you.’

  ‘When you told me off for being a bad mother.’

  ‘I didn’t say those words—’

  ‘But you thought it,’ she interrupted, trying to remind herself, as much as him, why they shouldn’t be together.

  ‘I admit, I’ve been judging everyone but mostly myself for as long as I can remember...’

  ‘Since the accident?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been confused and carrying guilt with me for so long that I felt lost without it. I was driven to punish myself since that day.’ His voice was low and sombre.

  ‘But it wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘You and everyone in this town have said that so many times,’ he stated. ‘But it was how I saw it.’

  Juliet thought she heard something more in his words but she wasn’t sure. ‘How you saw it? So it’s not how you see it now?’

  Charlie looked at her and shook his head. ‘It’s not how I want to see it any more and being with you I know that’s possible.’

  ‘What’s changed?’ she asked, not daring to hope that he wanted her. And was ready to build a life with her. And with her daughter. The three of them as a family.

  ‘I know that hurting you won’t bring my wife back. Nothing can. I realised that as I’ve slept alone in my bed for the last two nights wanting you beside me. Wanting to feel your tenderness and love again. Being near you brought my spirit back and being with you and making love to you made me feel more alive than I thought possible. I won’t let you go without a fight. I know that spending the rest of my life regretting the moment my wife and I climbed in that car two years ago won’t change anything. I will still have a place in my heart for the woman I loved back then, but I don’t want to lose the two special women who have come into my life now. I want to live in the present and build a future and I want to do it with you. I want you, Juliet, now and for ever if you’ll have me, and I want to be the father that Bea needs. If you’ll let me.’

  ‘I never wanted to fight you on that. I just wanted to love you,’ she told him with tears welling in her eyes.

  ‘I know that, Juliet, and I’m sorry. The fight was never with you, the fight was with myself and my stupidity, my need to carry the guilt like a cross and my need to punish myself to make amends. I don’t want to do that any more. In the week since we met, I have been questioning everything that’s been my life, my reality for the last two years. You and Bea have made me want more. You’ve made me want a life that’s free of remorse and sad memories. You’ve brought a light back that I never thought I would see again and warmth that I never thought I would feel. I don’t want to live in the cold or the dark any more. I want to really live again. To have you by my side for the rest of my life.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Juliet,’ he said, dropping to one knee and wrapping her hand into the strength and warmth of his, ‘I’m asking you to be my wife. To love me the way you did the other night. To share your life and to bring life back into my home and make me want to sleep in our four-poster bed and make love to you every night. Will you? Will you make me the man I want to be and the man I can be if you’ll allow me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered with tears freely flowing down her face as she fell into his arms and kissed him as if there would be no tomorrow. ‘Yes, of course I’ll marry you. I love you, Charlie Warren.’

  ‘And I will love you for ever, Juliet...and spend the rest of my life decorating Christmas trees with Bea...and the rest of our children.’

  * * * * *

  Look out for the final instalment of the CHRISTMAS MIRACLES IN MATERNITY quartet

  A ROYAL BABY FOR CHRISTMAS

  by Scarlet Wilson

  And, if you missed where it all started, check out

  THE NURSE’S CHRISTMAS GIFT

  by Tina Beckett

  THE MIDWIFE’S PREGNANCY MIRACLE

  by Kate Hardy

  Available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from A ROYAL BABY FOR CHRISTMAS by Scarlet Wilson.

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  A Royal Baby for Christmas

  by Scarlet Wilson

  PROLOGUE

  May

  HIS EYES SCANNED the bar as he ran his fingers through his hair. Six weeks, three countries, ten flights and thousands of miles. He’d been wined and dined by heads of state and consulate staff, negotiated trade agreements, arranged to be part of a water aid initiative, held babies, shaken hands for hours and had a number of tense diplomatic conversations.

  All of this while avoiding dozens of calls from his mother about the upcoming royal announcement. His apparent betrothal to his lifelong friend.

  All he wanted to do was find a seat, have a drink and clear a little head space. Il Palazzo di Cristallo was one of the few places he could do that. Set in the stunning mountains of Montanari, the exclusive boutique hotel only ever had a select few guests—most of whom were seeking sanctuary from the outside world. The press were banned. The staff were screened and well looked after to ensure all guests’ privacy was well respected—including the Crown Prince of Montanari. For the first time in six weeks Sebastian might actually be able to relax.