Married By Christmas

by Carole Mortimer

  ‘For what?’ Lilli frowned, having been frozen in her seat since she realised it was Patrick on the telephone, her hands still shaking slightly.

  ‘For him to get here.’ Gerry grinned her satisfaction. ‘And you doubted he loves you! Patrick never shouts, Lilli. He’s never needed to. The softer he talks, the more anxious people are to do what he wants. But he’s shouting now, Lilli—and it’s because I deliberately gave him the impression you wouldn’t be going back to the hotel until later this evening.’ She laughed, glancing at her wristwatch. ‘Eighteen minutes, and counting!’

  Lilli was sure the other woman was wrong. As his sister, she might know Patrick very well, but she had no knowledge of him as a husband. There was no way Patrick would come to her...

  And she wasn’t going to him yet either, wasn’t ready for that, readily falling in with her father’s suggestion that they have the champagne after all. Anything to delay going back to the hotel. And discussing their divorce...

  ‘To the two of you.’ She toasted her father and Gerry with pink champagne. ‘May you be happy together at last.’ She owed them this much, owed them so much more than she had ever realised.

  Her marriage to Patrick meant she was no longer a child, and she was learning all too forcefully what Patrick had said all along: things were never just black and white. No one was to blame for the triangle that had evolved six years ago, not even her mother. Maybe it wasn’t emotionally fair, but, faced with a sure slow death, her mother had clung to the things that she still could, and that included her husband and daughter. Given the same circumstances, Lilli wasn’t sure she would have done the same thing, but it was what had happened, and it was over now. It was time to shut the door on that, and start again.

  For all of them, it seemed...

  She swallowed down her feelings of apprehension with the champagne. Time enough to face all that later; right now was the time to let her father celebrate. And for him and Gerry to be allowed to be happy with each other at long last.

  ‘Hmm, three minutes early,’ Gerry suddenly murmured after another glance at her watch. ‘He must have broken several speed limits to get here this fast at this time of the day—and on Christmas Eve!’ She smiled across at Lilli. ‘I just heard Patrick’s car in the driveway.’ She listened again. ‘Patrick entering the house,’ she added ruefully as the front door could be heard slamming loudly shut. ‘Patrick entering the room,’ she announced before turning to face him, a glowing smile lighting up her face. ‘Patrick, what a surprise!’ she greeted warmly. ‘You decided to join us, after all.’

  He didn’t even glance at his sister, all his attention focused on Lilli as she stood near the fire. ‘I thought you were coming back to the hotel once you had spoken to your father,’ he grated accusingly.

  Her hand trembled slightly as she held onto her champagne glass. ‘We were celebrating,’ she said with soft dismissal.

  ‘Richard and I were just going off in search of another bottle of champagne,’ Gerry said lightly. ‘Weren’t we, darling?’ she prompted pointedly.

  ‘Er—yes. We were,’ he agreed somewhat disjointedly, frowning at Lilli and Patrick.

  Patrick returned his gaze coldly. ‘Pink, of course,’ he said. ‘It’s Lilli’s favourite.’

  ‘How well you know your wife,’ Gerry drawled, lightly touching his cheek as she passed him on her way to the door. ‘We shouldn’t be too long,’ she assured Lilli gently in passing.

  The room suddenly seemed very quiet once the other couple had left, closing the door softly behind them, even the ticking of the clock on the fireplace suddenly audible.

  Lilli could only stare at Patrick. Dear God, he looked grim. Her hands began to shake again as she tightly gripped the glass.

  ‘But not for much longer, hmm, Lilli?’ he suddenly exclaimed as he strode further into the room, dark and overpowering in black denims and a black sweater. ‘Will I know you as my wife?’ he added at her puzzled frown.

  Something seemed to snap inside her at that moment, a return of the old Lilli through the fog of uncertainty, pain, truth—so much truth, it was still difficult to take it all in!—and she faced Patrick unflinchingly as she carefully placed her glass down on the table behind her. ‘I thought we had an agreement that our marriage was for life,’ she reminded him haughtily—every inch Elizabeth Bennett at that moment. But she was neither Just Lilli nor Elizabeth Bennett any more, she was Lilli Devlin—and she was about to fight for what she wanted! ‘The agreement—verbal though it might have been—was binding on both sides. You can’t just opt out of it when it suits you, Patrick.’ She still didn’t believe that Patrick loved her—it would be too much to hope for!—but if she could remain his wife, who knew what might happen in the future...?

  ‘When it suits me—!’ he exploded furiously, a nerve pulsing erratically in the hardness of his cheek. ‘It doesn’t suit me at all to have my wife walk out on me the day after our wedding! Even Sanchia waited a little longer than that.’

  ‘Forget Sanchia,’ Lilli returned. ‘I am not her, am nothing like her. And I’m not walking out on you.’

  ‘I have just spent most of the day, the day following our wedding, at the hotel on my own,’ he bit out. ‘I would say that’s walking out!’

  ‘Rubbish,’ she snapped back. ‘I spent all of the morning and part of the afternoon, at the hotel with you,’ she reminded him, a blush to her cheeks as she remembered those hours of intimacy. ‘We’ve been apart maybe three hours at the most—’

  ‘And look what happened in those three hours!’ he said disgustedly.

  ‘What, Patrick? What happened during that time?’ she challenged. ‘My father had his money returned to him. What does that have to do with us, with our marriage? You told me last week that it wasn’t mentioned during the proposal or the acceptance; so what bearing does this afternoon’s events have on our marriage? Well?’ she pressed after several seconds of tense silence.

  He gave a snort. ‘Everything!’

  She became suddenly still, looking at him carefully. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Lilli.’ He paced about the room. ‘It may not have been mentioned, but we both know how relevant Brewster giving the money back is to us; you admitted as much yourself earlier this afternoon when I asked you!’

  She thought back to their conversation after Andy had left, to what Patrick had said, because she hadn’t said anything! ‘And just how did I admit it, Patrick?’ she asked softly. ‘I don’t believe I said anything.’

  ‘You didn’t have to,’ he groaned. ‘The look on your face when you realised how close you had come to not marrying me spoke for itself; you went white!’

  She drew in a deep breath. Pride, Gerry had told her, had cost her six years of happiness with the man she loved...

  ‘Are you interested in why I went white, Patrick?’ she said.

  ‘I know why you went white,’ he ground out, glaring at her. ‘You missed keeping your freedom by twenty-four hours!’

  Lilli steadily met his tempestuous gaze, unmoved by the fierceness of his expression. ‘You’re partly right—’ She ignored his second snort of disgust in as many minutes, choosing her words carefully. ‘I realised,’ she said slowly, ‘how narrowing I had avoided not marrying you—’

  ‘Then we don’t have a problem, do we, because—?’

  ‘Be quiet, Patrick, and let me finish what I’m saying!’ She glared at him. ‘And listen, damn it! I said “how narrowly I had avoided not marrying you”—because if Andy had come back into our lives two days ago you would have been the one to call off the wedding. Wouldn’t you?’ she persisted.

  ‘I—’

  ‘Not me, Patrick,’ she continued unwaveringly. ‘I wouldn’t have called it off, because I wanted to marry you!’ The last came out in a rush, Lilli holding her breath now as she waited for his reaction.

  He continued to look at her, but some of the fierceness went out of his expression, uncertainty taking its place.

  And unc
ertainty wasn’t an emotion Lilli had ever associated with Patrick before...

  ‘Why?’ he said bluntly.

  She swallowed hard. Could she really just tell him—? Pride, Gerry had called it. And look what it had cost the other woman in terms of real happiness...!

  She drew in a deeply controlling breath. ‘Because I love you!’ Once again the words came out in a rush, and it was her turn to look uncertain now. ‘I know you don’t love me,’ she continued hurriedly at Patrick’s stunned expression. ‘That you decided never to love again after Sanchia—’

  ‘As you said earlier—forget Sanchia,’ he dismissed harshly. ‘As far as I’m concerned she ceased to exist the day she decided to destroy our child because she believed pregnancy would ruin her figure—’

  ‘Patrick, no!’ Lilli gasped disbelievingly. How could anyone destroy another human life for such selfish reasons? The life of Patrick’s child... Which was why he had asked her if she wanted children... Why he had made such a point of telling her she would look beautiful when she was pregnant...! ‘Oh, Patrick...!’ Her voice broke emotionally as she went to him, her arms going about his waist as she rested her head against his chest.

  ‘You said you loved me...?’ he said quietly.

  He stood a little apart from her, his own arms loose at his sides, his expression distant as she looked up at him. ‘Not the past tense, Patrick.’ She shook her head firmly. ‘I do love you. Very much. And I do not want a divorce,’ she added determinedly. ‘I told you before, you aren’t going to have everything your own way—’

  ‘I don’t want a divorce either!’ His voice rose agitatedly, moving at last, his arms coming tightly about her waist. ‘I thought you did. I thought—Lilli, I know what I said to you when I asked you to marry me.’ He looked intently down at her. ‘I was trying to protect myself, trying—’ He shook his head in self-disgust. ‘I lied, Lilli. I—’

  ‘You don’t tell lies, Patrick,’ she reminded him softly, hope starting to blossom somewhere deep inside her, too deep down yet to actually flower, but it was there nonetheless...

  ‘Lilli. Just Lilli. My Lilli.’ His hands cupped either side of her face as he raised it to his. ‘That first night at the hotel, as you lay sleeping in the bed—Don’t look like that, Lilli,’ he admonished gently. ‘You were beautiful that night. I lay beside you for hours just watching you.’ He smiled as she looked startled. ‘You were—are—so beautiful, and yet as you slept you looked so vulnerable. By the time morning came I had decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life waking up with you beside me. I didn’t recognise those feelings as love then, but—’

  ‘Love?’ she echoed huskily, that hope starting to flower now, to grow and grow, until it filled her.

  ‘Love, Lilli. I fell in love with you that night. Although I certainly didn’t recognise it as such.’ He grimaced. ‘Only that I wanted you with me for the rest of my life. But when I came out of the bathroom that morning you had gone...’

  ‘I felt so embarrassed by what I had done.’

  ‘I realise that,’ he nodded. ‘It was the shock of my life, only a matter of hours after that, to discover you were actually Richard Bennett’s daughter. With all the complications that entailed—’

  ‘I know about my mother, Patrick,’ she interrupted. ‘And about Gerry and my father. I—We’ve all made our peace.’

  ‘Have you? I’m glad. Gerry’s life was such a mess five years ago, and for years I harboured very strong feelings against your father for causing that unhappiness. And then two months ago Gerry took him back into her life, and I—I didn’t take the news too well initially. Maybe I was a bit over-zealous—businesswise—where your father was concerned, because of that. Part of me wanted him destroyed in the way he had destroyed my sister’s life,’ he admitted heavily.

  ‘And you hated me because I was his daughter,’ Lilli said knowingly.

  ‘I didn’t hate you.’ His arms tightened about her once again. ‘I could never hate you. I was not—pleased to discover you were his daughter.’

  ‘You believed I had slept with you deliberately,’ she reminded him teasingly.

  ‘Only for a matter of a few hours. I was so damned angry when I found out who you really were that it seemed the only explanation for the way you had left the party with me—’

  ‘I had just seen my father with Gerry,’ she told him. ‘I was angry and upset, and although I didn’t know you were Gerry’s brother the two of you seemed close, and so I—I decided to go with you to spite her. Not very nice, I’ll grant you, but at the time I just wasn’t thinking straight. I got the shock of my life when I woke up that morning in a hotel bedroom and heard you singing in the adjoining bathroom!’

  ‘Well, of course I was singing,’ he grinned. ‘I had just found the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with!’

  ‘And I thought I had spent the night making love with you and couldn’t even remember it!’ she recalled with a groan.

  ‘I know, love,’ he said. ‘That was obvious when I came to your house later that day.’

  ‘And you let me carry on believing it!’ she reproved exasperatedly.

  ‘Don’t be too angry with me, Lilli.’ He kissed her gently on the lips. ‘It was the fact that we hadn’t made love that made me realise I had made a mistake about that. When I sat and thought about it later, if you really had set out to trick me that night, you would never have allowed yourself to go to sleep in the way that you did, and you certainly wouldn’t have left the hotel so abruptly. I also realised, as I sat angrily churning all this through my mind, that our night together actually made things less complicated rather than more so. It enabled me to ask you to marry me,’ he explained at her questioning look, ‘to point out all the advantages of such a marriage, without ever having to admit how I felt about you. I didn’t want to love anyone, Lilli, but—What I feel for you is like nothing I have ever known before. I want to be with you all the time. To make love with you. To argue with you—we do them both so well!’ He smiled. ‘I’ve never felt like this before, Lilli,’ he told her intently. ‘I love you so very much.’

  She believed him! Patrick loved her. And she loved him.

  And if either of them needed any further proof of that then the kiss they shared was enough, full of love and aching passion—enough to last a lifetime.

  Lilli’s eyes glowed, her cheeks were flushed, her lips bare of gloss, when she looked up at him some time later. ‘Would you really have let me go?’ she prompted huskily.

  He frowned. ‘If it was what you wanted,’ he said slowly.

  No, he wouldn’t. She knew him too well already to actually believe that. ‘Without a fight?’ she teased.

  ‘No,’ he admitted dryly.

  She laughed softly, hugging him tightly. ‘I’m so glad you said that—because I wouldn’t have gone without kicking and screaming either!’

  His answering laugh was full of indulgent joy. ‘We’re never going to part, Lilli. I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy.’

  ‘Just continue to love me,’ she told him. ‘It will be enough. I—’

  ‘Can we come back in yet?’ Gerry looked cautiously around the door she had just opened. ‘Only the champagne is getting warm!’

  ‘Do come in.’ Lilli held her hand out towards the other woman. ‘Let’s drink the champagne and make a toast.’ She smiled glowingly at her father as he came in carrying the tray with the champagne bottle—pink, of course!—and another glass. ‘To a wonderful Christmas and New Year for all of us,’ she announced as they all held up their glasses, sure in her heart that every year was going to be a happy one from now on. For all of them.

  ‘How could you do this to me?’ Patrick groaned tragically. ‘I’ll never survive!’

  Lilli laughed at his comical expression, very tired, but filled with a glow that shone from deep inside her. ‘You’ll survive only too well,’ she said knowingly. ‘Now there will be three of us to love and spoil you.’

  ‘Twins!’ Pat
rick looked down into the cribs that stood next to the hospital bed, gazing in wonder at the identical beauty of the babies that slept within them. ‘And both girls,’ he added achingly. ‘I’m going to end up spoiling all of you!’

  Lilli smiled at him indulgently. Their daughters had been born fifty-five and fifty-one minutes ago, respectively, and Patrick had been at her side the whole time she had been in labour. As he had been at her side during the whole of the last year...

  Lilli had been right; this past year had been the happiest of her life. And she knew it had been the same for Patrick, that the birth of their beautiful daughters on New Year’s Eve had made it all complete.

  ‘Think how poor Daddy felt.’ She gave a happy laugh. ‘James Robert was born on Christmas Day!’ No one, it seemed, could have been more surprised than her father when Gerry had presented him with a son a week ago.

  It was probably the celebrating that had been going on ever since the birth that had brought on Lilli’s own slightly premature labour. But it hadn’t been a difficult birth, and their darling little girls were worth any pain she might have felt.

  ‘Now all we have to do is think of names for them both,’ Patrick said a little dazedly.

  He was right. They hadn’t even known she was expecting twins, and because they had been absolutely convinced the baby she carried was a boy they hadn’t chosen any girls’ names at all.

  ‘Is there room for three more in there?’ Her father stood in the doorway, his baby son in his arms, Gerry at his side. ‘Or are the Devlins taking over?’ he added teasingly.

  Lilli’s family was complete as her father, Gerry and her new little brother came into the room.

  Since she and Patrick had admitted their love for each other, Lilli had been convinced that every new day was the happiest of her life. But as she looked at all her family gathered there together, all so happy, she knew this was definitely their happiest day. Yet...