One Scandalous Christmas Eve

by Susan Stephens

  After all, he had long since transformed from the young man happily wed to his first love into a womaniser known throughout Europe for his passionate but short-lived affairs. At twenty-eight, he was generations removed from the naïve and idealistic man he had once been, but his family stubbornly refused to accept the change in him. Of course, his parents were as much in love now as they had been on the day of their marriage and fully believed that that happiness was achievable by all. Tor didn’t plan to be the party pooper who told them that lies, deceit and betrayal had flourished, unseen and unsuspected, within their own family circle. He preferred to let his relatives live in their sunny version of reality where rainbows and unicorns flourished. He had learned the hard way that, once lost, trust and innocence were irretrievable.

  Dressing for his night out, Tor set aside his gold cufflinks, his platinum watch, all visible signs of his wealth, and chose the anonymity of faded designer jeans and a leather jacket. He would go to a bar alone and drink himself almost insensible while he pondered the past and then he would climb into a taxi and come home. That was all he did. Allowing himself to forget, allowing himself to truly move on, would be, he honestly believed, an unmerited release from the guilt he deserved to suffer.

  Eighteen months later

  Tor frowned as his housekeeper appeared in his home office doorway, looking unusually flustered. ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘Someone’s abandoned a baby on the doorstep, sir,’ Mrs James informed him uncomfortably. ‘A little boy about nine months old.’

  ‘A...baby?’ Tor stressed in astonishment.

  ‘Security are about to check the video surveillance tapes,’ the older woman told him before stiffly moving forward. ‘There was a note. It’s addressed to you, sir.’

  ‘Me?’ Tor said in disbelief as an envelope was slid onto his desk.

  There was his name, block printed in black felt-tip pen.

  ‘Do you want me to call the police?’

  Tor was tearing open the envelope as the question was asked. The message within was brief.

  This is your child.

  Look after it.

  Obviously, it couldn’t possibly be his child. But what if it belonged to one of his family? He had three younger brothers, all of whom had enjoyed stays at his London town house within recent memory. What if the child should prove to be a nephew or niece? Clearly, the mother must have been desperate for help when she chose to abandon the baby and run.

  ‘The police?’ Mrs James prompted.

  ‘No. We won’t call them...yet,’ Tor hedged, thinking that if one of his family was involved, he did not want a scandal or media coverage of any kind erupting from an indiscreet handling of the situation. ‘I’ll look into this first.’

  ‘So, what do I do with it?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘The baby, sir,’ the housekeeper extended drily. ‘I’ve no experience with young children.’

  His fine ebony brows pleated. ‘Contact a nanny agency for emergency cover,’ he advised. ‘In the meantime, I’ll sort this out.’

  A baby? Of course, it couldn’t be his! Logic stirred, reminding him that no form of contraception was deemed entirely foolproof. Accidents happened. For that matter, deliberate accidents could also occur if a woman chose to be manipulative.

  Like other men, he had heard stories of pins stuck in condoms to damage them and other such distasteful ruses, but he had never actually met anyone whom it had happened to.

  Fake horror stories, he told himself bracingly. Yet, momentarily, unease still rippled through Tor, connected with the unfortunate memory of the strange hysterical girl who had stormed his office the year before...

  Eighteen months earlier

  Pixie used the key to let herself into the plush house that was her temporary home. Several glamorous, high-earning individuals shared the dwelling, and as a poor and ordinary student nurse she was fully conscious that she was enjoying a luxury treat in staying there. She was happy with that, simply grateful to be enjoying a two-week escape from living under the same roof with her brother and his partner, who, sadly, seemed to be in the process of breaking up.

  Listening to Jordan and Eloise constantly fighting, when there was absolutely no privacy, had become seriously embarrassing in the small terraced home she shared with them.

  For that reason, it had been a total joy to learn that Steph, the sister of one of her friends, had a precious Siamese kitten, which she didn’t want to abandon to a boarding facility while she was abroad on a modelling assignment. Initially, Pixie had been surprised that Steph didn’t expect her housemates to look after her pet. Only after moving in to look after Coco had she understood that it was a household where the tenants all operated as independent entities, coming and going without interest in their housemates in a totally casual way that had confounded Pixie’s rosy expectations of communal life with her peers.

  But in the short term, Pixie reminded herself, she was enjoying the huge indulgence of a private bathroom and a large bedroom with the sole responsibility of caring for a very cute kitten. As she was currently working twelve-hour shifts on her annual placement for her final year of nursing training, living in the elegant town house was a treat and she was grateful for the opportunity. A long bath, she promised herself soothingly as she stepped into the room and Coco jumped onto her feet, desperate for some attention after a day spent alone.

  In auto mode, Pixie ran a bath, struggling greatly not to dwell on the reality that during her shift in A & E she had had to deal with her first death as a nurse. It had been a young, healthy woman, not something any amount of training could have prepared her for, she acknowledged ruefully. Put it in a box at the back of her brain, she instructed herself irritably. It was not her role to get all personally emotional, it was her job to be supportive and to deal with the practical and the grieving relatives with all the tact and empathy she could summon up.

  Well, she was satisfied that she had done her job to the best of her ability, but the wounding reality of that tragic passing was still lingering with her. She was not supposed to bring her work or the inevitable fatalities she would see home with her, she reminded herself doggedly, striving to live up to the professional nursing standards she admired. But at twenty-one, still scarred as she was by her own family bereavement six years earlier, it was a tough struggle to take death in her stride as a daily occurrence.

  Dressed in comfy shorty pyjamas and in bare feet because the house was silent and seemingly empty, it being too early in the evening for the partying tenants to be home while others were travelling for work or pleasure. At this time of day and in the very early morning, Pixie usually had the place to herself, her antisocial working hours often a plus. She lit only the trendy lamp hanging over the kitchen island, hopelessly thrilled with the magazine perfection of her surroundings. Moulded work surfaces, fancy units and a sunroom extension leading out into a front courtyard greeted her appreciative gaze. Pixie loved to daydream and sometimes she allowed herself to dream that this was her house and she was cooking for the special man in her life. Special man, that was a joke, she thought ruefully, wincing away even from the dim reflection she caught of herself in the patio doors, a short curvy figure with a shock of green hair.

  Green! What had possessed her when she had dyed her hair a few weeks earlier? Her brother Jordan’s lively and outspoken partner, Eloise, had persuaded her into the change at a moment when Pixie was feeling low because the man she was attracted to had yet to even notice that she was alive. Antony was a paramedic, warm and friendly, exactly the sort of man Pixie thought would be her perfect match.

  But the hair had been a very bad idea, particularly when the cheap dye had refused to wash out as it was supposed to have done and she had then checked the instructions to belatedly discover that the lotion wasn’t recommended for blond hair. She had hated her blond curls from the instant she was christened ‘
Poodle’ at school, and not by her enemies but by her supposed friends. In recent weeks, she had learned that green curls were far worse than blond because everyone, from her nursing mentor to her superiors and work colleagues, had let her know that green hair in a professional capacity was a mistake. And she couldn’t afford to go to a hairdresser for help. She might be working a placement, but it was unpaid, and because of her twelve-hour shifts it was virtually impossible for her to maintain a part-time job as well.

  Still preoccupied with her worries, Pixie dragged out her toasted sandwich machine and put the ingredients together for a cheese toastie. It was literally all she could afford for a main meal. In fact, Coco the cat ate much better than she did. She put on the kettle, thought she heard a sound somewhere close by and blamed it on the cat she had left playing with a rubber ball in her room next door. Coco was lively but, like most kittens, she tired quickly and would fold up in a heap in her little princess fur-lined basket long before Pixie got to sleep.

  While she waited for her toastie, Pixie contemplated the reality that she was returning to her brother’s house that weekend. She hated living as a third wheel in Jordan’s relationship with Eloise, but she didn’t have much choice and, since he had lost his job over an unfortunate expenses claim that his employers had regrettably deemed a fraud rather than a mistake, Jordan was having a rough time. All his rows with Eloise were over money because he hadn’t found work since he had been sacked and naturally, the bills were mounting up, which in turn made Pixie feel terrible because she was only an added burden in her brother’s currently challenging existence.

  Jordan had become her guardian when their parents died unexpectedly when she was fifteen and he was twenty-three. Pixie was painfully aware that Jordan could have washed his hands of her and let her go into foster care, particularly when they were, strictly speaking, only half-siblings, having been born from the same father but to different mothers, her father having been married and widowed before he met her mother. Even so, Jordan hadn’t turned his back on her as he could have done. He’d had to jump through a lot of hoops to satisfy the authorities that he would be an acceptable guardian for an adolescent girl. She owed Jordan a lot for the care and support he had unstintingly given her over the years, seeing her through her school years and then her nursing course.

  ‘Something smells good...’

  At the sound of an unfamiliar male voice, Pixie almost leapt a foot in the air, her head swivelling with a jerk to focus on the strange man slowly spinning round the recliner in the unlit sunroom, where he had apparently been seated unnoticed by her.

  ‘Heaven must be missing an angel’ was the cheesiest pickup approach Pixie had ever received, but for the very first time she was looking at a man who might legitimately have inspired such a line with his sleek dark fallen-angel beauty. He was otherworldly in his sheer masculine perfection. Her heart was still beating very fast with fright and, striving to crush those inappropriate thoughts, she stepped forward. She collided involuntarily with the eyes of an apex predator—sharp, shrewd, powerful and dark as the night sky. ‘I didn’t see you in there...who are you?’ she asked as civilly as she could, fearful of causing offence to any of Steph’s housemates or their friends.

  ‘I’m Tor,’ he murmured. ‘I think I must have fallen asleep before I called a taxi to take me home.’

  ‘I didn’t know anyone was here. I’ve just come in from work and I was making some supper,’ Pixie confided. ‘Who are you visiting here?’

  His brow furrowed. Slowly, he sank back down on the recliner. ‘My apologies... I don’t recall her name. A leggy redhead with an annoying giggle.’

  ‘Saffron,’ Pixie told him with concealed amusement. ‘But why did she just leave you in here?’

  He shrugged. ‘She stormed off. I rejected her and it made her angry.’

  ‘You rejected...Saffron?’ Pixie queried in disbelief because Saffron, a wannabe actress, resembled a supermodel and turned heads in the street.

  ‘A misunderstanding,’ he corrected smoothly. ‘I thought I was coming to a party. She thought something else. I’m sorry. I’m rather drunk, not in proper control of my tongue.’

  No way was he drunk!

  Pixie was accustomed to dealing with surly drunks at A & E and usually they could barely vocalise or stand without swaying or cursing. He was speaking with perfect diction and courtesy and remained astute enough to smooth over the unfortunate impression he might have made in saying bluntly that he had rejected the other woman. All the same, she hadn’t thought there was a man born who wouldn’t jump at the chance of having sex with the gorgeous redhead. Presumably, Saffron had either sought the privacy of her own room upstairs to handle such a blow to her ego or she had gone out again, but Pixie could only be impressed by a man particular enough in his tastes to say no to a beauty like Saffron.

  ‘What are you cooking?’ he shot at her unexpectedly.

  ‘A cheese toastie,’ Pixie responded in an undertone as she lifted the lid, waved away the steam and reached for her plate.

  ‘It smells incredible...’

  ‘Would you like one?’ she heard herself ask and she wanted to slap herself for being so impressionable.

  He was a complete stranger and she owed him nothing but, as her brother’s partner had warned her, she was a ‘nurturer’, the sort of woman whom men, according to Eloise, would take advantage of. And Pixie had seen the evidence for that condemnation in her own nature. She did like to feed people; she did like to take care of them. Pleasing people, tending to their needs, satisfied something in her, a something that Eloise believed she should suppress out of self-interest.

  ‘I’d love that. I’m starving.’ He smiled at her and that smile locked her knees where she stood because it was like a galaxy of golden warmth engulfing her, locking his lean bronzed features into shocking beauty, releasing a flock of butterflies low in her tummy. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she castigated herself with self-loathing as she reached for the bread and butter again before saying, ‘Here...have this one... I’ll have the next.’

  As she pushed the plate with a knife and fork across the island, he tugged out one of the high stools and settled into it. She busied herself with the sandwich maker, her pale skin pink while he watched her, and she could feel the weight of his regard like a brand. Nothing she had felt in Antony’s radius could compare to the thrumming level of awareness assailing her beneath the stranger’s gaze.

  * * *

  The hair was weird, there was no other word for it, Tor was reflecting, his gaze locked to those tumbling pale green curls lying tousled on her narrow shoulders, but if a woman could rock green hair, she was rocking it. She had the brightest blue eyes he had ever seen, the softest, pinkest mouth, the most flawless skin, but she was so undersized he could barely see her behind the barrier of the island.

  ‘What height are you?’ he asked curiously.

  Pixie cringed. ‘About four ten...no tall genes in my family tree.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Why are you asking me that?’

  ‘I’m in an unfamiliar house with unknown occupants. I don’t want to find out that I’m keeping company with someone’s child, and you don’t look very old...’

  ‘I’m twenty-one,’ Pixie provided grudgingly. ‘Almost a fully qualified nurse. Totally grown-up and independent.’

  ‘Twenty-one is still very young,’ Tor countered mildly.

  ‘So, how old are you, old man?’ Pixie enquired teasingly, putting down the lid on the second toastie and relaxing back against the kitchen cabinets to watch him eat. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Black, sweet. I’m twenty-eight,’ he told her.

  ‘And married,’ she noted without thought as the ring on his wedding finger glinted under the light and she switched on the coffee machine again. ‘What were you doing with Saffron? Sorry, none of my business... I shouldn’t have asked,’ she mutter
ed, backtracking in haste from that unintentional challenge.

  ‘No offence taken. I’m a widower,’ Tor volunteered.

  Pixie turned back to him, stirring the coffee and passing it to him. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Tor said with a stiffness she recognised, the awkwardness of someone unaccustomed to dealing openly with the topic of grief. ‘It’s been five years since my wife and my daughter died.’

  Pixie paled. ‘You lost your child as well?’

  Pixie felt even more awkward, painfully aware of how she had felt earlier that evening when she had dealt with her first death at the hospital. The finality of a passing and the grieving family left behind scarred the staff as well. For a man to have lost both a wife and a child together was an enormous double blow and her heart squeezed on his behalf at the idea of such a huge loss.

  Pale too beneath his bronzed skin, Tor jerked his chin down in silent confirmation.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘Nobody ever mentions it now. For them it’s like it happened a hundred years ago,’ he muttered with perceptible bitterness.

  ‘Death makes people uncomfortable. They avoid discussing it often out of fear of saying the wrong thing.’

  ‘Or as if it might be contagious,’ Tor slotted in drily.

  ‘I know... My parents passed within a week of each other and even my friends avoided me at school when I went back,’ she told him with a grimace of recollection.

  ‘A car accident?’

  ‘No, they caught legionnaires’ disease on a weekend away. They were both diabetic with compromised immune systems and they didn’t go for treatment soon enough. They thought they’d caught some harmless virus and none of us knew any different.’ Pixie shifted a wordless shoulder in pained acceptance. ‘My father went first and Mum a day later. I was devastated. I had no idea how ill they were until it was too late.’