The Unexpected Holiday Gift

by Sophie Pembroke

  ‘What did you have in mind?’ he asked, clearing his throat as he tried to disperse the images filling his head. But really... Secluded castle, snowed in, roaring fire... There was even a sheepskin rug in front of it, just waiting for naked bodies.

  But not his and Clara’s bodies. Because that would be wrong. Somehow.

  Why would that be wrong again?

  Clara’s teeth pressed against her lower lip before she answered, and Jacob’s mind wandered on a little field trip again.

  ‘I thought maybe you might want to hear a little about Ivy.’

  He swallowed, hard. Ivy. His daughter. Fear rose in his throat once more at the thought. ‘I’d like to know a little more about what happened. After you left, I mean.’ Facts, those he could control, could understand. So he’d focus on the events—what happened and when. ‘What did you tell people?’

  ‘What people?’ Clara asked with a half-smile. ‘Once I left you...I didn’t have anyone. Until Ivy came along, and until I met Merry.’

  He hated the thought of her all alone in the world. But it had always been her choice. ‘What did you tell Merry? The truth?’

  Clara shook her head. ‘I told her that I’d had a one-night stand after I left you, and that he didn’t want anything to do with the result.’ The result. A daughter. ‘That’s what I told anyone who asked about Ivy’s dad.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’ He swallowed. ‘Ivy.’ His daughter.

  ‘That I loved her father very much but he couldn’t be with us.’ Her gaze locked onto his. ‘So, the truth. That’s why I couldn’t come back. I took that pregnancy test and...I knew I couldn’t have both. I could have you or a baby. And I chose Ivy.’

  Of course she had. Wasn’t that what any reasonable human would do? Any loving mother?

  ‘You chose to lie to me,’ he said, his voice hard. ‘You chose to take away my choice. To take away the rights of my parents to see their grandchild, to even know that they had one. You made a decision that wasn’t just yours to make.’ It didn’t matter that her choice had been the right one. It should have been his too.

  ‘It was my body. My choice.’

  ‘My daughter.’ Hearing it out loud was even more frightening. ‘Five years, and you never even told me she existed.’ Never gave him the chance to understand what had really happened between them.

  ‘You didn’t want a family—you made that crystal-clear to me from the outset. Or at least once we were married, when it was too late for me to do anything about it.’

  ‘So what? I’m allowed to make that choice. What did you think I would do? Did you think I’d order you to get rid of the baby?’ Even the thought made his skin crawl. If she truly believed that about him, then she’d never known him at all. Their whole marriage had been a mistake.

  ‘No!’ Clara’s eyes grew wide with shock. ‘I didn’t...I knew you wouldn’t do that. No, Jacob. It wasn’t that.’ He shouldn’t feel relieved—everything was still such a mess. But a very small part of him relaxed just a little bit at her words.

  ‘Then what? Why didn’t you talk to me at the time?’

  Clara ran a shaky hand through her dark hair. ‘I didn’t find out until after I left. I took a dozen pregnancy tests in a hotel bathroom, just to be sure. But...I’d already left you, Jacob. Again. And I realised that was all we’d been doing since the day we’d got married: pulling apart until we snapped back together again. Everything would be perfect, then you’d get caught up in some project and I wouldn’t see you for weeks. I’d get lonely, I’d walk out to get your attention...and then you’d win me back and it would be all flowers and romance. But only for a while, until it started all over again.’ She sighed. ‘I knew that even if by some miracle you changed your mind about having a family—which you wouldn’t have done—we couldn’t have brought up a child like that. So I made the decision not to come back.’

  ‘And since then?’ He didn’t want her answers to make sense. And even if they did, he was still furious. Not because she was wrong—he couldn’t say he would have changed his mind about wanting a family. He still hadn’t, even though he apparently had one. But because she’d taken away his chance to decide. She’d made him powerless. He felt the same helplessness he’d felt the night Heather had been hurt. And he couldn’t forgive that. ‘It’s been five years, Clara. Did you really at no point think, “Ooh, maybe I should let Jacob know about our child”?’

  ‘Of course I did!’

  ‘Then what stopped you?’ Because that was the part he really couldn’t understand. Maybe a child meant that they couldn’t be together any longer; maybe she was right that their marriage couldn’t have taken that. But that was still no reason not to tell him.

  ‘You did.’ Her words were soft but heavy. Full of meaning. And he understood them instantly. He hadn’t been good enough. He’d failed as a husband and Clara had known he’d fail as a father—and so had he! That was exactly why he’d been so adamant about not becoming one.

  But hearing her say it out loud, seeing it come from those same lips he’d been thinking about kissing... Jacob felt his heart break, just a little.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m not sure you do.’ Clara twisted her hands together as she stared up at him. ‘I knew you didn’t want a child. Knew that Ivy was the last thing you wanted in your life. You’d made that very clear.’

  ‘So you were sparing me the knowledge? It was for my own good?’ he asked, incredulous. Not even Clara could believe that.

  ‘No. It was for Ivy’s. I couldn’t let you reject her, and let her live her life knowing that she wasn’t wanted. I wouldn’t do that to her. Not even for you.’

  Jacob looked away. ‘I can understand that, I guess. And...as much as I hate it, you made the right decision. For both of us.’

  ‘Did I?’ His gaze snapped to her face as she spoke. ‘I always thought so. But after this week... I’m not so sure.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean...I thought it was all over for us, the moment I left.’ Clara’s gaze met his and he felt it deep in his soul. He was missing something here. And he had a feeling he couldn’t afford not to listen to her this time. ‘But you never would sign those divorce papers.’

  * * *

  It was a risk. A calculated one, but a risk nonetheless. Still, the more she thought about it, the more she wondered. Yes, it had been five years. And yes, she understood now that Jacob’s fear of failure must have played into his reluctance to actually give her the divorce. But surely the easier choice would have been to move on, to start over and succeed with someone else, if that was all it was.

  There had to be something more. A bigger, better reason why he’d never really moved on from their marriage. From loving her.

  Clara knew she had the advantage there. She’d never been able to move on completely, or leave Jacob behind, because his eyes had stared at her every day over the breakfast table, looking out from their daughter’s face. She could never cut him out of her memories, even if she’d done her best to cut him out of her life.

  But Jacob... Once they left here, that could be it for him. As soon as the snow melted, he could sign those papers and walk away for ever. Never see Ivy. Never see Clara again.

  If that was what he really wanted. But she was starting to suspect it wasn’t.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Jacob asked, pulling back to put a little more distance between them. ‘I’ve given you all of my secrets now. You know everything. So, what do you want?’

  ‘I want you to know you have a choice,’ Clara said slowly, thinking it through as she spoke. ‘You have a daughter, and you know that now. You can choose to ignore that fact, but you can’t deny that you know it. So you have to decide—do you want to be a part of Ivy’s life?’

  She held her breath while she waited for his answer.

&
nbsp; ‘You’d let me? If I wanted?’

  ‘Of course.’ Clara nodded. ‘But there are conditions.’

  ‘I thought there might be.’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘If you want in, you have to be one hundred per cent sure. Because once she meets you...you’re her father. You have to be there for her, for everything she needs. You can’t let her down.’

  ‘And if I can’t commit to that?’

  ‘Then you walk away now and Ivy will never know that you exist.’ It was just what she’d planned, the way she’d lived for so long. So why did the idea feel like such a wrench to her heart now?

  ‘What about you? You’ll always know. And what about us? Is our marriage part of this deal?’

  Clara shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It depends.’ She couldn’t think beyond Ivy right now.

  ‘Depends on what?’

  She looked up and met his gaze again. ‘On why you never signed the divorce papers.’

  He made a huffing sound that was almost a laugh and put his wine glass down on the table. Clara watched the firelight dancing across his skin and wondered if she really could let him go again without touching him one more time...

  ‘If I signed them,’ Jacob said, the words slow and precise, ‘I knew, once they were signed, that there was no chance of you ever coming back. And I wasn’t ready to face that.’

  ‘Because it would have meant you’d failed?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t imagine my life without you in it, even when you weren’t there.’

  The breath caught in Clara’s throat. Had he spent the past five years the way she had, imagining a parallel life in which they were still together? Another universe where they were happy?

  ‘I couldn’t let go of us either,’ she admitted quietly. ‘That’s one of the reasons why I never pushed back when your lawyers put obstacles in my way.’

  ‘I wondered.’ Jacob shifted closer, just near enough so that his sleeve brushed against hers. Barely touching, but still she felt it like a lightning strike through her body. It was as if everything she’d ever been missing was finally coming home. ‘I hoped.’

  ‘I guess it’s not as easy as all that to just leave a year of marriage behind,’ she said, swallowing hard as she saw the heat in his eyes.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. The marriage part was only ever a piece of paper. It was you I couldn’t bear to be without.’ Not the status. Not the band on his finger that showed his clients that he was serious, grown up, able to take care of business.

  Her. Just Clara.

  He wanted her, the way that her own family never had. And even if he decided to walk away tomorrow, she owed herself one more night of being wanted like that.

  She knew now the real reason why she’d never signed those papers either. Because she still wanted him too. She’d been waiting for him to confirm that it was over.

  And suddenly it wasn’t. It wasn’t over at all.

  She couldn’t say which of them moved first, but in a blink of an eye the distance between them disappeared and she was close enough to feel his breath against her lips. Her tongue darted out to run over them, as if she could taste him there already.

  Jacob groaned, low, in the back of his throat, and then the millimetres between them vanished altogether.

  The kiss felt just as Clara remembered—like love, and home, and warmth—and she wondered how she’d lived without this for five long and lonely years. How she had ever believed, even for a moment, that things could be over between them.

  She knew now, in that instant, that things could never be truly finished between her and Jacob. Whatever happened next, however large the distance between them might grow, it would never be the end. She would always be connected to this man, in a way far more elemental and real than a mere marriage certificate. It wasn’t even only Ivy who held her tied to him; it was her own heart.

  And that, she’d discovered, she couldn’t organise and order into submission. Her heart had a life of its own, a love of its own, and it had chosen Jacob six years ago and had never let go.

  She knew now it never would.

  Jacob pulled back, just enough to look into her eyes, his forehead resting against hers and his breath coming as fast as her own.

  ‘Okay?’ he murmured.

  ‘Just fine,’ Clara replied, her mouth strangely dry.

  She knew there were questions to be answered, things to consider and decisions to be made, eventually. But, right in this moment, her world had shrunk to little more than just the two of them and the snow falling outside that had kept them together on Christmas Eve, six years to the day after they met.

  Then her phone buzzed and she remembered the oven warming and the food waiting to be cooked. She pulled back but Jacob’s hand shot out and he wrapped his fingers around her waist.

  ‘Ignore it,’ he whispered.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’ Clara asked.

  ‘Not for anything you can cook.’ Jacob gave her a slow, hot smile and Clara knew that dinner would be several hours away.

  And by that time she would be ravenous.

  This time, it was Clara who leant in to kiss him first and that kiss led to many, many more, each more wonderful than she’d remembered, or ever dreamt she’d feel again.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  JACOB STRETCHED OUT across the sheets of the four-poster bed, luxuriating in the warmth of the fire burning in the grate, the wonderful ache in his muscles from a night of loving his wife and the feel of Clara’s smooth, bare skin beside him.

  Well.

  That wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind when he’d envisioned the perfect family Christmas, but now it was here...

  He’d forgotten how in tune they were, physically. They might not have been able to communicate all the issues they had between them in their marriage, and in their pasts, but physically they’d always been able to express themselves totally. The way their bodies moved against each other, the way their fingers sought out sensitive places, the way their mouths moved across skin... That was beyond conversation, beyond language, even. It was innate. It was special.

  It was something Jacob knew he’d never find with another living soul, no matter how hard he looked.

  Maybe that was the real reason he’d held up the divorce. Maybe it hadn’t been his need not to fail, or to prove something, or to make Clara as miserable as she’d made him by leaving.

  Maybe it had been as simple as knowing that Clara was his only chance at true happiness.

  Only an idiot would give that up without a fight. But when Clara had left she’d denied him that fight, taking the battleground far away, somewhere he couldn’t reach.

  But now he had his opportunity.

  His last chance to win back his wife.

  But if he wanted that chance, he had to make a decision—the biggest he might ever make. He couldn’t rush it, just because sex with Clara was so good. This mattered—Ivy mattered. Even if he couldn’t be her father, he still knew she mattered more than anything, especially to Clara. So he had to get this right. He wouldn’t hurt another child—physically or emotionally.

  One night with Clara wasn’t enough to brush away all of his fears, and he’d be an idiot if he thought it could. But Clara believed in him. That counted for something.

  It counted for a hell of a lot, in fact.

  But was it enough?

  Only Jacob could make that decision. And he wasn’t sure where to start.

  * * *

  Clara woke to the glorious pressure of Jacob’s lips against her skin and let herself just enjoy the moment for almost a full minute before reality came crashing down around her.

  She’d slept with her ex-husband. She’d let herself get carried away by the connection between them before th
ey’d come to any decision about Ivy—just as she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do.

  She hadn’t even worked on persuading him that having a child in his life would not be the terrible, horrible thing he imagined.

  She’d done nothing to convince him that Heather’s childhood accident shouldn’t affect his whole life, or to deal with the issues that had spanned their marriage and led to her leaving in the first place. Instead, she’d just taken what she’d wanted, selfishly and greedily, and without thinking about what would happen in the morning.

  But now it was morning.

  She sighed, puffing air out into the pillow. They had talked, they’d covered all sorts of secrets and she’d given him her terms. That wasn’t nothing. She understood him a lot better now. She’d just have to hope it was enough and that he knew what he was committing to if he chose to be part of Ivy’s life.

  Jacob’s hands ran up the length of her body, his fingertips skimming her skin and making her shiver. She almost didn’t want to move, didn’t want to give any sign that she was awake, because the moment she did the night would be over and they would have to deal with the hard decisions to be made in the cold light of day. If Jacob said no, if this really was the end for them, she just wanted one more moment in his arms...

  But Ivy was out there waiting for her.

  Opening her eyes, Clara realised that they hadn’t even managed to close the curtains before falling into the massive four-poster bed the night before, and the winter sun that Jacob had been so sure that Scotland never saw was streaming in through the glass.

  ‘It’s stopped snowing,’ Clara said, blinking in the light.

  ‘Mmm-hmm,’ Jacob murmured, his lips busy working their way across her neck. ‘So it has.’

  Suddenly, Clara’s mind overruled her body and she twisted around in his arms to face him, even as her skin called out for more. ‘If the snow has stopped they might be clearing the roads.’