Christmas Getaway (16 page)

“We're sad, too,” Charlie said cautiously from the settee. “Maybe we can all be sad together.”

“Welcome to my world.” Joe's expression was cautiously hopeful. A man who'd seen a chink of light. “Endless reruns of the Road Runner.”

“The Road Runner's good,” she told him.

“In moderation.”

“You have a beach.”

“The kids don't like the beach.”

“You don't like the beach?” She disentangled Zoe and
stepped back, gazing first at the kids and then out to where the Pacific Ocean lay in all its glory. “Why not?”

“It's scary,” Lily whispered.

“But you have your uncle Joe to look after you.”

Their glance at their uncle Joe said it all. They didn't know him. They'd been tossed into a terrifying environment where the rules weren't the same. They didn't know how to handle it.

“We always have a nanny,” Zoe said. “The nanny tells us the rules.”

“I suspect your uncle Joe knows some rules.”

“He doesn't tell us.”

“So why not?” Molly asked him, and Joe looked flummoxed.

“Hey. I told the kids to do what they like.”

“Right. Kids need rules. Now if you'll excuse me…”

“You can't go,” Joe said.

“Why not?” She gazed at him in astonishment.

“You…hell, you just can't.”

“You throw me into a rose garden at my own wedding. You rip my gown—which, I might add, cost me a king's ransom—and now you tell me where I can and can't go?”

“I need you.”

 

W
HERE HAD THAT
come from? He'd never said such a thing in his life.

He didn't need anyone.

But desperate times called for desperate measures. Sure it was a cliché, but someone had made it up for good reason. Now was as desperate as he was ever likely to get.

He had four days to go before Christmas. He was so far out of his depth with these kids he felt like drowning.

This woman knew them. She had some sort of link to their past. She'd spent last Christmas with them.

Zoe was back clutching her legs.

“No,” Molly said.

“No?”

“It's my honeymoon.”

“You can have your honeymoon with us,” Lily said, but she sounded doubtful.

“We're nicer than Connor,” Charlie said, and she looked across the room at him and she thought about it and she sniffed.

It was a pretty decisive sniff. Joe thought back to the last woman he dated. Elspeth would have given away her Manolo Blahnik shoes rather than sniff.

He didn't do emotion. He didn't do needy females.

That sniff sort of…touched him.

“You know, it's Christmas,” he said gently. “Every hotel in Australia will have been booked out months ago.”

“I still have my booking at the…” She stopped.

“Where?” he prodded.

“The Paradise Island Honeymoon Resort,” she said on a little gasp, and he wasn't fast enough to repress a smile.

“Laugh and you're dead meat,” she snapped.

“I'm not laughing.” He schooled his expression into seriousness.

“I can still go there.”

“You'd hate it.” His voice became gentler. “Molly, we have a huge house. Five bedrooms. The kids and I are upstairs using two bedrooms between us. The whole bottom floor can be yours. There's even a little kitchenette down there.”

“So Mom and Dad can eat up here and the nanny and us can eat downstairs,” Lily said.

“That sounds real cozy,” she said, before she caught herself.

“It's not great,” Joe said. “Nothing for these kids has been great.”

She fell silent. There was a long pause while Joe wisely decided not to say anything at all.

“I don't even know you,” she said at last.

“I'm Joe Cartland. Erica's brother.”

“I know that much at least,” she snapped.

“Letitia knew we'd be here. I can't understand why she didn't tell…”

“If you think Letitia was capable of a coherent thought, you're so far off reality there's no help for you. Her son's wanted for…” She gasped and stopped and looked at the kids. She reformatted whatever it was she was about to say. “Her son's wanted for theft. Her husband's useless. Henry just nods and smiles like one of those bobble-head dogs you see in the back of cars.”

“That's Great-Uncle Henry,” Lily said wisely. “He nods all the time.”

“He does look like one of those dogs,” Charlie said, and giggled.

They all drew a breath. Joe looked across at Charlie. He'd giggled.

It was the best sound.

Charlie had taken on the weight of the world since his parents' deaths. His little sisters had clung to him and he'd reacted with a strength that belied his age. He'd asked for help from Joe because he didn't know what to do, but it wasn't working.

This woman had been in the house for five minutes and Charlie was giggling.

“You have to stay,” he said, and he didn't even try to disguise the urgency in his voice.

“I don't want to.”

“What else do you want to do?”

“I don't know,” she wailed. “Set the clock back. Not get
engaged to Connor in the first place. Beam me up to some planet where none of this exists.”

“Well, while you're waiting for your spaceship, why don't you go downstairs, get into a swimming costume and then join us in the pool.”

“I wanted to escape.”

“I guess we all want to do that,” he said. Then, at the look on her face—a combination of anger, bewilderment and despair—he took a couple of strides across the room. He lifted Zoe away from her legs and popped her behind him.

“Let's give Molly some space,” he said. “She needs to make her own decision.”

“Right,” she said. “As if I can. Blackmailing…”

“I'm not blackmailing.”

“I don't know what else you could call this. It's a trap, ready-set.”

“Not by me.” He said it steadily, meeting her gaze with what he hoped was his most honest, reliable, nonconfrontational expression.

It didn't work. “Men,” she said with loathing. “They're all the same.”

“I'm not the same as Connor.”

Her glare said she didn't believe him. “If I stay here, I stay completely separate.”

“But you will have a swim with us?” Charlie said, sounding bewildered.

She cast a despairing glance across at him. “I might have known it. You're male, too.”

“I'm just a boy,” Charlie said.

“Me, too,” Joe said virtuously, and she glared some more.

“Right.”

“But you will stay.”

There was another pause—even longer than the last one. He watched the warring emotions flitting across her face. She was right in thinking this was a trap, he thought. It was a trap for both of them. Three orphans for Christmas.

Three orphans and Molly. A battered bride.

It'd be interesting, he thought, and the gray fog that had surrounded him from the moment he'd heard of Erica's death lifted a little.

Just a little. There was no point in getting his hopes up yet. But his hopes were up. He forced himself to stay quiet, to school his face into impassivity, to try and make it seem like it was all her decision and he wasn't forcing things.

“You're a bottom feeder,” she said into the silence, and he blinked.

“Um…why?”

“Because you're male and I hate the species.”

“Except for me,” Charlie said anxiously, and she sighed.

“Yes, Charlie, apart from you.”

“Try and forget I'm male,” Joe said hopefully.

“Yeah, right.”

“But you will stay?” Lily asked, and Molly threw up her hands in surrender.

“Fine. I'll stay. Let's have Christmas. But if I'm staying, I refuse to watch the Road Runner. I want a real Christmas.”

“Of course we'll have Christmas.”

“No,” she said decisively. “Not a white-plastic-Christmas-tree Christmas. A proper Christmas. I want a real tree and plum pudding and mistletoe. I want Santa Sacks and church at midnight and all the trimmings. I want ten miles of paper chains hung all round this crazy white house, and I want paper lanterns everywhere. It'll keep our minds off everything and that's the most important thing right now. Joe, pour me a
drink. Zoe, Lily, come and help me unpack. Charlie, the handle came off my smallest case out by the driveway. Can you go collect my cosmetics, please? Not that I'll need them here. And, Joe Cartland, if you so much as think about being male, I'm hightailing it out of here so fast I'd leave the Road Runner for dead. Got it?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said faintly.

“Right,” she said. “Let's do it. Let's get Christmas on the road.”

W
HAT HAD SHE
agreed to do?

Molly stood in front of the big mirror in the downstairs bedroom and stared at her reflection in consternation. She was wearing her brand-new bikini. It was a slash of scarlet designed to make Connor's eyes water. It had cost a fortune.

She was wearing it for Joe and three kids.

There was no going back now. The kids had helped her unpack, she'd sent them upstairs to put their own bathing gear on and they were expecting her by the pool.

Joe was expecting her by the pool. He was up there making her a drink.

He was too good-looking by half. He'd hauled her into the rosebushes with such force that she still had bruises. But the cops had looked at the bullet holes in the chapel entry and had nothing but praise for the guy.

“Tommy was specifically aiming for your bridesmaid and his shots were wild,” they'd said. “One of the other guys started shooting, as well. Everyone was in danger. We had no choice but to shoot back. If Letitia hadn't collapsed and this guy hadn't pushed you sideways, you'd probably both be dead.”

“So you guys were shooting at me?” she asked, astounded.

“You don't understand, ma'am,” they'd replied patiently.
“Tommy opened fire indiscriminately. He was firing on wedding guests, as well as us. We had no choice but to take him out.”

“But you didn't,” she'd snapped. “He got away.”

It made her nervous. Connor was still out there somewhere. Who else was with him?

They'd made threats against these kids. She thought about it now and wondered whether Joe was aware of it. Maybe that's why he'd brought them here, she thought. Australia was about as far as you could get from Dallas and Connor and his thugs.

And evil.

She shivered, feeling sick as she did every time she thought about it. How close had she come to marrying the guy?

Why had Connor wanted to be married to her? But she knew the answer to that. She was a high-profile lawyer. Her firm represented Boston's old money. She had it figured now. Connor was a crooked cop. He needed respectability and she could give it to him.

That was why the sudden pressure to marry. Apparently rumors had been spreading in the force and he wanted them squashed.

So much for wanting to impress Connor with her bikini. She stared into the mirror and winced. Had he even wanted her? Had he seen anything other than the respectable, boring, legal side of her?

She shivered, feeling lonely, sick and sad.

Maybe it was just as well she'd committed to spending Christmas with three kids, she thought. Otherwise…well…

“Otherwise” didn't bear thinking about.

But the package included Joe.

There was something not to think about. Joe with the kindly eyes, but the look that said he saw deeper. He was disturbing. Too big. Too male.

He was waiting with a drink.

She was committed. She had to go. But she picked up her sarong and tied it round her waist; then rethought and tied it higher.

Respectable Molly.

 

S
HE WALKED THROUGH
the glass doors leading to the pool and he almost dropped his beer.

This was the third time he'd seen her. The first time she'd looked like a rumpled piece of overly ornate candy floss. Then, when she'd arrived today, she'd been wearing a business-type skirt and jacket. It had been red but it was conservative. She'd even been wearing nylons.

But now…

The sliver of a sarong was transparent enough for him to see the outline of a smashing bikini underneath. Nothing else. Her legs were bare. She'd hauled her hair out of the knot she'd had it in, and her curls were brushing loosely against her bare shoulders.

She looked young, he thought. He knew that she was a lawyer—a partner in one of Boston's bigger law firms. She had to be in her thirties.

She looked about nineteen.

“Hi,” he said for want of anything better, and she cast him a scared glance, accentuating his impression of youth.

“Hi, yourself.”

“Molly,” the kids yelled. They were sitting on the edge of the shallow end of the pool, lined up like three little birds.

“Why aren't you in the water?” she called.

“We're waiting for you.”

“Molly's come all the way from the U.S.,” he told them, reprovingly. “She gets a drink before she swims. It's in the rules.”

Rules. He saw how the word resonated.

This was how these kids had been brought up, he thought. Molly had twigged it. What he'd been doing for the last few days—giving them choices, leaving the rules up to them—must have seemed an extension of the chaos their lives had become since their parents had died. Molly had it right. He had it wrong.

He didn't do kids. He was dumb with kids. What was he doing even trying?

“I want you to test out the water,” Molly was telling them. “I want you to try it out and see if it's suitable for me to come in. Charlie, look after Zoe.”

Right. The three little figures almost visibly relaxed. They knew the rules now. They slid into the water.

“You're not allowed to go past the curvy bit,” Charlie said firmly to Zoe, clearly taking the take-care-of-Zoe rule to heart. “It's too deep.” He looked up at Joe. “We know how to float. You want to see us?”

“Yes, please,” Joe said weakly. He hadn't been able to get these kids in the water. He was feeling about as useful as a gnat.

But at least he'd made Molly a drink. He crossed to the sumptuous poolside bar and fetched his concoction, bringing it back to her as he watched the floating.

She accepted it with care and eyed it in astonishment. “What the…”

“It's Sex on the Beach,” he told her with a certain amount of pride.

Her jaw sort of sagged. She stared down at the drink like it might contain arsenic. “Um…what?”

“Sex on the Beach,” he repeated and grinned. “Peach schnapps, rum, banana liqueur, coconut cream, orange juice and ice.”

“It's what you give all the girls,” she said faintly. “Instead of a nice cup of tea.”

“I'm working my way through a recipe book. Erica and Vincent had every form of alcohol known to man stocked in this bar. Half the liqueurs are open. If they're not used they'll go off, and there's a book called
Seduction by the Glass
. It's a hundred cocktail recipes. I'm up to number four.” He motioned to his beer. “One a day's my limit before I swap to this. You, however, are not in charge. You can have as many as you want.”

Maybe it was the wrong thing to say. She rearranged her facial muscles from disapproving to downright judgmental. Black cap judgmental. “This is no seduction scene,” she said flatly.

“Get real. With three kids?” He raised his glass in a gesture of toasting her. “I'm drinking light beer. And the cocktail I made me was a Virgin Grasshopper. Nonalcoholic.”

“How very noble.”

“I hoped you might think that.”

 

M
AYBE HE WASN'T
too bad. Maybe she should relax a bit.

Sex on the Beach? Virgin Grasshoppers? She stared down into her salt-rimmed glass with the gay little parasol and even managed a smile. She put her nose into her cocktail glass and took a cautious sip. It was strong and sweet and…

And not that bad. It sent the odd bit of fire into her solar plexus. She hadn't been aware she needed a bit of fire down there but now that it had happened…

It was sort of comforting, she thought. Or was it the man watching her as she sipped.

“Awful?” he asked.

“Not bad.”

“But not good?”

“I wouldn't want two.” She smiled again. These were her first smiles since the wedding chaos and they felt strange. Almost a betrayal.

A betrayal of what? Connor?

Right.

“I might try what's next on the list,” she said, hugely daring. “But later,” she added hastily, as he reached for his book with obvious enthusiasm. “With a meal in between. The last thing you need is a tipsy bride.”

“The last thing I need is any sort of bride,” he said before he could help himself.

She thought about that. She sipped again. She turned to the pool, where splashing competitions were being held, and watched the kids for a while.

“So domesticity's not your scene?” she said at last, attempting lightness. This situation felt awkward and weird and she was out of her comfort zone. She wouldn't mind knowing a bit more about the man she'd just decided to spend Christmas with.

“No,” he said flatly.

“Your sister was hardly a family woman, either,” she said thoughtfully.

“Our parents were dysfunctional, to say the least,” he confessed. “Dad disappeared when we were two. By five we were in the first of a series of foster homes, and we were split up for much of our childhood. We learned pretty early that attachment hurts.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“You, too?” He frowned.

“Same deal, only with rich parents,” she said. “Like these kids, my brother and I were raised by nannies and with rules. We're ten years apart in age so we hardly knew each other, much less our parents. Love sucks.”

“Says the bride.”

“Says the ex-bride,” she said bitterly. “I figured it out on the plane over here. Connor and I were good together because we didn't need each other. We were independent. Then we broke the rules by trying to get married.”

“You're not blaming what happened on a decision to get married?” he demanded.

“No, but it was dumb.” Her sarong came loose and she tossed it onto the sun lounge. Whatever Sex on the Beach had in it, her need for protection suddenly seemed a little less.

“Character assessments aren't your thing?” he queried.

“You know, I would have said they were.” Her tone was bitter. “Do you know what Jean heard the night of the rehearsal?”

“I got the gist. Have you seen Jean since the wedding?”

“Briefly. What she heard is important so she's being taken care of by the police. She wasn't specific but I gather she heard enough to terrify her.”

“I know that much, too,” he said gently. “The cops rang me yesterday, just confirming the kids are safe. They told me about the threats, but they've decided while there's a nationwide search out for Connor, the last thing he or any of his henchmen will want to do is stick round to kill the kids for further revenge against a dead Vincent. The cops think the kids will be safe here.”

“If you didn't hear about the threats until yesterday…why did you come?”

“I came because the kids were miserable with their grandparents, they know this place, the media attention meant I could get the authorities in the U.S. to cut red tape to get them here…and they need a Christmas.”

“You know, I think you're a very nice man,” she said sud
denly, decisively, and put her now-empty glass down on the table with a determined clink. “A very nice man.” And before he could figure what she intended—before she thought about it herself—she stepped forward, stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.

It was a feather touch of a kiss but it met his lips and it burned.

She stepped back, her eyes widening. Whoops. Where had that come from? He looked…stunned.

“That's what you get for feeding me Sex on the Beach when I'm jet-lagged,” she said a trifle unsteadily. “I…thank you. I'm going in now.”

“Into the water?”

“Where else would I be going. Don't give me any more of those cocktails.”

“No, ma'am.”

“And don't think I meant anything by that kiss,” she said, a trifle desperately. “I have a feeling I shouldn't have done it but I needed to, though just for the moment I can't exactly figure out why.”

“No, ma'am,” he said again.

She couldn't think what else to say. There was nothing else to say.

She walked to the deep end of the pool, businesslike and efficient, and dived neatly in.

 

H
E DIDN'T GET
into the pool. Not because he didn't want to, but because he didn't know what to do if he did.

Molly had found a beach ball. She and Zoe were playing a version of water polo with Lily and Charlie. Molly's height made up for Zoe's lack of inches so the teams were evenly matched.

The change in the kids was extraordinary. It was like the
cork had popped out of a bottle of fizz. They whooped and giggled and shrieked and they forgot all about being the miserable waifs they'd been for the last few days.

Maybe it was a combination of things, he decided, trying not to believe it was just him being insensitive that had caused the kids' misery. He and Vincent hadn't got on; therefore he'd hardly seen the kids. Even when he was in the States he'd made excuses not to visit his sister, and every time he did visit… He thought back to those few occasions and remembered the kids in the background with a nanny as Vincent and Erica ushered him out of their magnificent home to eat at an equally magnificent restaurant. Vincent felt the need to show him how successful he was in life. All he'd succeeded in doing was make Joe feel uneasy in his presence.

At least the kids had felt they knew him enough to phone him and ask him to rescue them from their appalling grandparents. But that didn't qualify as close.

They knew Molly. Maybe they saw her as a link to the past.

“Why aren't you swimming?” Charlie called out to him, and he shook his head at his nephew and smiled down at the four of them wallowing in the shallows. How to say it felt too intimate? Too close? Too much fun for the likes of him?

“I need to get dinner going.”

“It doesn't take long,” Charlie said. “Three minutes each in the microwave.”

Whoops. His secret was out.

“What takes three minutes in the microwave?” Molly asked.

“Macaroni and cheese,” Lily said, grabbing the ball while Molly's attention was diverted. “We went to the supermarket yesterday and bought twenty boxes of macaroni and cheese. That's five suppers for us.”