Orphan Under the Christmas Tree

More Praise for Meredith Webber:

‘Meredith Webber does a beautiful job

as she crafts one of the most unique romances I’ve

read in a while. Reading a tale by Meredith Webber

is always a pleasure, and

THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

is no exception!’

—Book Illuminations on THE HEART SURGEON’S BABY SURPRISE

Orphan Under The Christmas Tree

Meredith Webber

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Praise

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Copyright

For my sister-in-law Caroline, an inspirational refuge worker

CHAPTER ONE

SHE was a psychologist.

She should be able to look at a problem, consider it from all angles, and then solve it.

So why was Crystal Cove’s annual bunfight of the raising of the Christmas tree causing Lauren Cooper such grief?

Easy answer!

Nat Williams would be there. Nat Williams, Crystal Cove’s very own surfing superstar, current world number one, had been invited to press the button that would engage the ropes and pulleys that would lift the already decorated tree into position in the middle of the park that ran along the esplanade above the Cove’s sheltered northern beach.

In her head, Lauren could hear her friend, Jo Harris, saying, ‘But you’re over him,’ and Lauren was.

Totally, and years ago, and relieved to be out from under his spell!

Not even heart-broken, not even then at seventeen, so why now, at twenty-nine, did she feel ill at the thought of meeting him again?

Lauren, Crystal Cove’s only practising psychologist, manager of the local women’s refuge and general all-round competent person, rested her elbows on her desk, put her head in her hands, and groaned.

‘Migraine?’

Wrong time and wrong place to be groaning! She’d completely forgotten she was at her desk at the hospital. The problem was she shared her office space with other therapists, and so it was open to any hospital personnel who happened to be wandering around.

She lifted her head and looked at the person who happened to be wandering around right then.

Dr Tom Fletcher, tall, dark, lean, and so handsome just looking at him sometimes took Lauren’s breath away.

‘No, I’m fine,’ she told him as he pulled a chair over from an adjacent desk and settled down across from her.

‘Really fine,’ she emphasised, in case he hadn’t got the message the first time.

‘No, you’re not.’

The words jolted Lauren out of her welter of doubt and anxiety and she frowned at him across the table. Eighteen months ago when Tom had first taken up his position as head of the Crystal Cove hospital, he’d asked her out, and she’d been very, very tempted.

But there was something about Tom Fletcher, with his grey eyes, easy smile and over-abundance of charm that had warned her to steer clear. Going out with Tom Fletcher might have meant getting involved. Getting involved might have meant …

She’d steered clear, reminding herself her life was just perfect as it was! She had a good job, a satisfying challenge in running the local women’s refuge, great friends, family close by—the life she wanted for herself.

The life she’d chosen for herself!

As for Tom, well, her refusal hadn’t dented his confidence. Since his arrival in town she’d watched him flirt with every woman in Crystal Cove; watched him squire any number of them around town, although none of the women he’d dated then deserted seemed to bear grudges against him, singing his praises as a companion, their pleasure in the affair, remaining friends with him even after the relationships had ended.

Tom Fletcher, she’d realised very early on, was one of those men all women loved, and apparently he loved being loved by them, but he was of the ‘love them and leave them’ tribe with no intention of ever settling down.

And to be honest, she wasn’t sure about the affairs or even his prowess as a lover because none of the women ever talked.

Which in itself was odd …

‘Earth to Lauren?’

She stared at him, unable to remember what he’d said, and unable to believe she’d drifted off into her own thoughts while the man, apparently, had something to say to her.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘What was it you wanted?’

You, Tom would have liked to say, but he knew he could never say it. Oh, he’d asked her out once, but fortunately she’d said no, because as he’d grown to know Lauren Cooper he’d realised she was a woman who deserved the best of everything the world had to offer and, as far as men went, that wasn’t him.

‘Nothing,’ he said instead. ‘Except to know if you’re okay. You’re pale as milk, you’re sitting in an empty room way after working hours, and groaning loudly.’

She looked into his eyes and managed a wry smile.

‘Not loudly, surely?’ she queried.

‘Loudly!’ he repeated. ‘It brought me racing from my office.’

Her smile improved.

‘You? Race? Ice-cool Tom? The one who keeps his head when all around are losing theirs, isn’t that the saying?’

‘Well, I hurried,’ he amended then because it was always so—well, nice—to be sitting talking to Lauren about nothing in particular—something that rarely happened in both their busy lives—he added, ‘And you did groan, so tell me.’

If only she could! With a supreme effort of will, Lauren refrained from groaning again.

Although …

She studied him for a moment, considering the bizarre idea that had flitted into her head—checking it from all angles.

Tom was a friend, after all, and what were friends for but to help each other out?

Although might it not be tempting fate?

‘I am a friend.’ Tom echoed her thoughts. ‘So, rather than doing both sides of the argument in your head, why don’t you talk it out with me?’

‘Because it would involve you!’

Was it because the answer had come upon her so suddenly that she’d blurted that out?

‘Aah!’ Tom was grinning at her, laughter dancing in his eyes, mischief gleaming there as well. ‘You’ve killed someone and need help to dig the hole to bury the body!’

She had to smile!

‘Not quite that bad,’ she admitted, ‘although there were times today when I could have strangled an obnoxious eight-year-old who thought hosing all the girls who walked past the refuge was a fun way to pass the afternoon.’

‘Bobby Sims?’ Tom asked, and she smiled again as she nodded in answer to his query. One of the things that made Tom Fletcher so darned appealing—apart from film-star looks—was his empathy. He could sit down with someone and be on his or her wavelength within minutes, or so Lauren had always found.

‘But you didn’t strangle the terror of the refuge, so what’s the problem?’

Lauren shifted her attention away from Tom—too distracting—looking around the room, feeling so ridiculous she wondered if she could make up some story to explain her groan and he’d go away and she’d find an excuse to just not go to the tree raising.

Except she had to go!

As her eyes came back to rest on Tom’s face, he lifted one eyebrow, a trick she’d tried and failed to master in her youth, and she knew he deserved an honest answer.

‘You’ll think I’m stupid,’ she began, then was furious with herself for being feeble enough to utter such an inanity. ‘No, I am stupid. And pathetic, and ridiculous, and I’ve got myself into a tizz over nothing so best you just slope off to wherever you’re going and leave me groaning into my hands.’

Lauren didn’t do stupid. That was the first thought that came into Tom’s head as he listened to her castigate herself. Of all the women he’d ever known, she was the most sensible, practical and level-headed, guided by what had always seemed a boundless store of common sense and a determination that bordered on ruthless—at least, where keeping the women’s refuge open was concerned. As far as he knew, in her private life she was just that, private—she lived alone and seemed to like it that way—but stupid? Never!

‘I’m not going,’ he announced. ‘Not until you tell me what’s got you frazzled like this. Is it Christmas? Does your family make a big deal of it, so you have relatives who bore you stupid descending on you for weeks at a time, and people arguing about who’s doing the cake and the best stuffing for the turkey?’

That won a smile, but it was wan and he realised that, subconsciously perhaps, he’d been worried about Lauren for a while. She was still as beautiful as ever, having good bone structure so tiredness didn’t ravage her features as it did some people. But she was pale, and the dark shadows beneath her eyes had deepened so they had a bruised look.

The smile had dried up while he was thinking about her looks, and she was frowning at him now.

Quite ferociously, in fact, so the words, when they came, seemed to have no meaning—certainly nothing to connect them to a ferocious frown.

‘I want to ask you out,’ she said, her eyes, a golden, greeny-brown and always startling against her golden blonde hair, fixed on his, no doubt so she could gauge his reaction.

Challenging him, in fact!

‘Okay,’ he managed, though battling to process both the invitation and the fierceness of it, which made the slight start of pleasurable surprise he felt quite ridiculous. ‘When?’

‘Tonight,’ she said. ‘In fact, right now—we should be leaving any minute.’

‘But it’s the great tree raising do tonight,’ he reminded her. ‘We’re both going anyway. The entire hospital staff was invited.’

No reaction beyond another, barely suppressed groan, so he took a wild guess.

‘Do you mean after the tree raising? Dinner somewhere perhaps?’

He was speaking lightly, but inside he was a mess of confusion, though why he couldn’t say. Perhaps because Lauren looked so unhappy, while her lips, usually full and with a slight natural pout, were pressed together, suggesting the tension she was feeling had increased rather than decreased after she’d shot out the invitation.

‘I suppose we could eat afterwards,’ she mumbled, and Tom had to laugh.

‘Now, there’s a gracious invitation,’ he said, but no glimmer of humour lightened Lauren’s face. If anything, she was looking even more grim!

He stood up and walked around the desk, squatting beside her and looking directly into her face, putting his hand on her shoulder—the lightest of touches but showing her without words that he was there for her.

‘Tell me,’ he said softly, and to his astonishment tears welled in her eyes, overflowed, and slid silently down her cheeks.

She made no attempt to brush them away so he pulled out his handkerchief, checked it was reasonably clean, and dried them for her.

‘I am being stupid,’ she muttered angrily. ‘I have to go because of the refuge—it’s been the main fundraising focus for the Christmas raffle and I’ll be getting the cheque and heaven knows—well, you know too—the refuge needs it, and if Cam and Jo hadn’t just become engaged I’d have asked Cam, but it would start too much talk in the town, and then there’s Mike but he seems quite interested in that new young probationary policewoman, and the school teachers have all gone home for the holidays, so—’

‘So you’re stuck with me,’ Tom finished for her. ‘That’s okay, I get the picture. You need a man tonight. That’s fine. Do you want anything special? A bit of panting? Lusting? Public displays of affection? Kisses, or just hand-holding?’

She knew Tom was only teasing, but hearing it put like that Lauren wanted nothing more than to shrink to mouse size and crawl into a hole and hide. How embarrassing! How could she have asked him?

And trust Tom to make a joke of it!

But wasn’t that for the best? At least he wasn’t getting any false ideas. So why did that thought make her feel weepy again?

She hauled in a deep, steadying breath, and watched as he straightened up.

‘I just need you to be there, that’s all,’ she said, cross with herself for making such a mess of things.

‘But obviously with you!’ he said quietly, and she, who hadn’t blushed since she was fourteen, felt heat flooding into her cheeks.

Mortified, she pressed her hands to them to cool them, or hide the vivid colour, and nodded.

‘No worries!’

But that was Tom! Nothing ever worried him—or seemed to …

He put his arm around her shoulders and looked into her face.

‘Now,’ he said gently, ‘I know you’re beautiful enough without it, but all my ladies go for a little make-up when they have to cover the signs of tears. I wouldn’t like to think the entire population of Crystal Cove sees you’ve been crying about having to go out with me. It would do my reputation no manner of harm, so into the washroom with you. We’ve ten minutes or so before we have to leave.’

He turned her and gave her a little push towards the washrooms, catching up with her to hand over her big tote, which she’d left beside her chair, passing it to her with such a warm smile her stomach turned over.

Was she stupid to be doing this? Stupider than she usually was over men?

Was he stupid to be doing this?

Tom took himself off to the men’s washrooms and splashed cold water over his face.

He’d been attracted to Lauren from the first time he’d seen her. Then working with her on the board of the refuge, he’d got to know her as a person and become, he thought, a good friend. So her refusal to go out with him had worked out for the best, he’d decided, because Lauren Cooper was a woman who deserved the whole deal as far as love was concerned and he didn’t do love.

Oh, he understood it existed. It even worked for a lot of people, but to him it was the most destructive force on earth and he’d decided at an early age that he would avoid it at all cost. The women with whom he’d enjoyed affairs over the years had always understood there’d be no ‘happy ever after’ scenario ahead of them. He was always honest, explaining right at the beginning that he enjoyed women and their company, enjoyed the physical pleasure of affairs, and hoped the enjoyment was mutual, but that he wasn’t looking for anything long term, particularly not marriage.

A few had asked why, and a few more had thought they’d change his mind, but on the whole they’d parted amicably enough and he remained on friendly terms with many of the women.

Lauren, however, was different …

‘Are you having second thoughts in there?’

An edge in her voice told him she’d recovered a little of her composure, but he wouldn’t have been human if he wasn’t wondering what had rattled her so much.

He emerged from the washroom, wanting to ask, but the Lauren who was waiting there was so far from the tense and tearful woman he’d left that any words he might have had dried to ashes on his tongue.

Which, he hoped, wasn’t hanging out.

She’d swept her shoulder-length blonde hair into a pleat at the back of her head, making her neck look longer, elegant. Mascara darkened her eyelashes, emphasising her fascinating eyes with their dashes of brown, green and gold, but it was her mouth that drew—and held—his attention.

He tried to remember if he’d ever seen Lauren wearing lipstick and decided, if he had, it must have been a pale, neutral shade, because one thing was for sure, he’d never seen those full, lush, pouting lips covered in a glossy, vibrant, fire-engine red.

A red that yelled danger, and beware, but at the same time tempted and seduced!

‘Much better,’ he managed to mutter, because wasn’t he Mr Cool where all women were concerned?

Inside he wasn’t cool at all, not even close.

Inside he was wired—his mind playing tricks on him, showing him flashing images of those lips while his body ached to feel them on his skin—just once—no, more than once—just once would never be enough …

‘So, shall we go,’ she said, Ms Cool definitely, whatever angst she’d been suffering, possibly was still suffering, hidden behind her war paint.

And it was war paint!

Those red lips would challenge every man who saw her, distract them from the tree raising, make them think things most of them shouldn’t think about a woman they maybe didn’t know.

She’d linked her arm through his elbow while his mind was rioting, and now walked him back along the corridor, and out of the hospital, her tote slung across her other shoulder, so her body was pressed to his, all down one side.

At least walking beside her he couldn’t see her lips, although he did keep sneaking glances at them—at her …

Tom was obviously regretting saying yes, Lauren decided as they left the hospital building. His usual rattle of cheery conversation had dried up, perhaps because he was trying to think of some way to extricate himself from this situation.

And was the lipstick too bright?

From the day she’d heard Nat Williams was coming back to town she’d searched the internet for red lipsticks, wanting bright and vibrant red, not orangy red or pinkish red, but fire-engine red.

Challenge red!

And it had to last, not disappear the moment she sipped a drink or ate a sandwich …

She knew it was pathetic, still to be hung up over something that had happened to her teenage self, although the psychologist in her accepted that the damage Nat had done to her would probably never go away.

Well, some of it wouldn’t—that was for sure …

‘You usually chat,’ she said to Tom as they crossed the car park, heading for the esplanade.

She’d spoken mainly to divert her thoughts, but also because it was weird, walking in total silence with the usually loquacious Tom.

He was regretting it!

‘Struck dumb by your red lips,’ he said, and something in his voice told her there might be an element of truth in what he’d said.

‘You struck dumb by lipstick?’ she teased, hoping they could reach some comfortably light-hearted plane before they joined the crush by the beach. ‘Hardly!’

‘You’d be surprised,’ he muttered, then he seemed to collect himself, taking her hand in his and drawing her towards the area where the road had been blocked off, and seating erected to one side of where the big tree lay. ‘Come on, we’re in the good seats,’ he said. ‘I can see Jo and Cam among the crowd milling near the platform—we can sit with them.’

He pointed out the two doctors. Jo Harris was Lauren’s best friend, Fraser Cameron Jo’s new fiancé. But he didn’t think Lauren was listening to anything he said, and was it because he was holding her hand that he felt her stiffen?

He turned towards her but her attention was on the stands, where a platform marked the place where the guest of honour would press the button to raise the tree. Tom checked out the people on the platform. Helene Youngman, the local mayor, four councillors, the managers of a few local businesses who donated funds towards the Christmas tree decorations, a youngish bloke in casual gear—was he the new dentist? Cam had heard someone had bought the practice but hadn’t met the man.

Whoever he was, he had a woman and a couple of kids with him. And everyone seemed to know him so maybe he wasn’t the new dentist …

Tom had been so engrossed in checking out the dignitaries on the platform, he hadn’t realised that Lauren had dropped his hand. She had also stopped moving, standing there, a yard or so behind him, seemingly frozen on the spot.

She couldn’t do it! Seeing Nat there with the woman who must be his wife had made Lauren’s stomach turn over—not with remembered love but with remembered fear, and apprehension for the woman she didn’t know. And most of all regret!

She should have spoken out—told someone—anyone …

Got him the help he must have needed, although at seventeen she’d had no idea help existed for men like Nat …

No idea that there were other men like Nat …

Back then she’d blamed herself …

Tom had turned back, taking her hand again, easing her towards the steps, and Jo materialised beside her, grabbing her other hand, the fingers of Jo’s left hand squeezing hers, Jo’s soft voice telling her she could do this, giving her a quick shoulder-to-shoulder hug, although Lauren was usually the hugger.

They climbed the steps to the platform and before Lauren could catch a strengthening breath, Nat was there in front of her.

‘Lauren Cooper,’ he cried as he stepped closer, arms out held for a welcoming hug. ‘Well, probably not Lauren Cooper any more. Far too beautiful not to have been snapped up by some lucky man!’

Her brain misfired, synapses missing, catching in the wrong places, so she answered far too brightly.

‘Hardly snapped up—far too busy playing the field! Wasn’t it you who used to quote that tired old saying about why buy a book when you can join a library?’

She flashed a brilliant smile and pulled Tom forward.

‘Tom’s more a set of encyclopaedia than a single book. Nat Williams, meet Tom Cooper.’ And for extra effect she pressed a kiss on Tom’s cheek, branding it with a scarlet imprint, then reaching into his pocket, her mind reeling at her own outrageous behaviour, to find his handkerchief to wipe it off.

Fortunately for her peace of mind, because she was too shocked by how far she’d already gone to consider any further conversation, Jo’s new fiancé, Cam, was a mad keen surfer and as soon as Jo introduced him to Nat, Cam commandeered the local surfing superstar, edging him away from the little group to talk waves and beaches and barrels and other surfing stuff.

Which left Lauren to face her best friend.

‘What is going on?’ Jo demanded. ‘And don’t tell me Tom knew you were going to introduce him like that. An encyclopaedia from the lending library! You made him sound like a hooker—or whatever the male equivalent of a hooker is. I was looking at him when you said it and he was as shocked as I was.’

‘Nothing’s going on,’ Lauren muttered, not able to even glance in Tom’s direction, fearful of the disgust she might see.

‘No?’ Jo persisted.

‘Of course not! I panicked a bit, that’s all,’ she muttered angrily. ‘Let’s leave it, shall we?’

‘Actually, I thought the encyclopaedia bit was great—heftier, more oomph, than an ordinary novel. And I don’t know what they call the male equivalent of hookers—hooksters, do you think?’

Tom had materialised beside them, taking Lauren’s hand in his and squeezing her fingers in the most comforting way as he joked about Jo’s objections.

Still clasping Lauren’s hand in his big, warm paw, he turned to Jo.

‘Okay, Jo?’

Before Jo could reply—not that there was anything she could say now Tom had taken the wind from her sails—the mayor stepped up to the microphone and was urging everyone to take their seats. Tom tucked his hand beneath Lauren’s elbow and steered her after Jo and Cam towards some spare seats in the fourth row of the temporary stands.

‘I am sorry, Tom,’ Lauren whispered to him. ‘I don’t know what came over me, and Jo was right, I made you sound cheap. The whole scenario was stupid—I can’t believe I fell apart the way I did back at the hospital and put you in that position.’