Orphan Under the Christmas Tree

‘His mother died—we couldn’t save her,’ he said, returning to slump into the chair he’d left in front of Lauren’s desk earlier.

‘I was kind of expecting that. Mike came in earlier,’ Lauren responded. ‘He said she had horrific injuries.’

‘Will you take Bobby back to the refuge until someone finds his family?’ He wasn’t sure why he’d asked, although it probably had a lot to do with the phantoms that had flashed by.

Lauren looked up at him, her eyes dark with concern.

‘I couldn’t do that to him, Tom,’ she said softly. ‘I couldn’t put him in there with other kids who have their mothers. I promised him I’d look after him. I’ve all but finished my hospital and private work now until mid-January and when I have to be at the refuge, I can probably take him or get Jo to mind him, but the problem is my flat’s so tiny and there’s no yard and he’s a little boy who needs lots of space. I could take him out to the family farm but my brother and his family and my parents are all away for a couple of weeks—spending Christmas with my sister in Melbourne. I was to go too, but—well, you know how low on funds we are at the refuge, and I’ve cut the staff and … ‘

Tom frowned down at her.

‘That doesn’t mean you should be working yourself to death there,’ he muttered. ‘But that’s not the point, I can understand you taking Bobby home tonight, but surely you don’t have to worry about a yard for him to play in—he’ll have family somewhere.’

Lauren stared at the man across her desk. Eighteen months she’d known Tom, worked with him, attended various committee meetings with him, thought she knew him as a friend, yet there was a strange note in his voice now—one she couldn’t quite put her finger on—not panic, certainly, but some kind of disturbing emotion.

However, whatever was going on in his head, she needed to answer him.

‘Joan never named Bobby’s father, perhaps she didn’t know, and Greg, the most recent of the men she’s lived with, is violent,’ she reminded him. ‘Like a lot of women in abusive relationships, Joan had cut herself off from her family, or they from her. Oh, Mike and his people will try to trace relations, but there’s more.’

She took a deep, steadying breath.

‘Bobby saw Greg in the stands right before the collapse. He was calling to Joan, and she went—’

‘This man was underneath the stands? Did you tell Mike?’

Lauren nodded.

‘He wasn’t killed or injured there … ‘

She watched as Tom computed the information she’d just shared.

‘Is Mike thinking—?’

‘They won’t know until the workplace health and safety people inspect the wreckage, but Mike’s been to Greg’s place—he’s not there, or at any of the pubs. They’re looking for him.’

A wave of tiredness so strong it was like a blow swept over her, and she shook her head.

‘I can’t think any more tonight. Best I get Bobby and myself home.’

‘Stay at my place,’ Tom offered. ‘I’ve three bedrooms, plenty of yard for Bobby to play in, and I can dig out some toiletries and hospital night attire for you both as well. You don’t want to be driving when you’re as tired as you are, and if Bobby’s still asleep you’ll never get him up the steps to your flat.’

Lauren stared at the man across the desk from her, wondering just what the offer meant, then realising it was nothing more than the kindness of a friend.

She felt a tiny stab of regret that it wasn’t something more, but shook the thought away. As if it could be that …

She even managed a smile as she made a far-too-weak protest.

‘You don’t have to do that for me,’ she said. ‘Especially after I was so rude about you earlier.’

He grinned at her and the stab deepened.

‘I rather liked the encyclopaedia reference, not to mention putting the surf god in his place.’

‘I doubt that,’ Lauren told him, but the regret she’d felt earlier was turning to guilt …

‘Come on,’ Tom added. ‘I’ll show you where the hospital emergency packs are, or do you know?’

‘I know,’ Lauren told him, pleased to have something concrete to grasp hold of. ‘I often bring in women who have left home with nothing.’

Tom nodded, so much understanding in his eyes she felt like crying, or maybe asking for another hug, but such weakness was definitely exhaustion so she hustled off to get some toiletries and night gear for herself and Bobby. She returned with her haul to find Tom had lifted the sleeping boy and was carrying him along the corridor towards the side door that was closest to his house.

Tom’s house was the official hospital residence, built in the same style as the hospital with wide verandas on three sides, all of them providing glimpses of the ocean. As Lauren walked through the door she tried to think if she’d ever been inside the house before. She’d been to the house often enough, invited to drinks or a barbecue with other friends, but they’d always sat on the veranda.

The living room was comfortably furnished, very neat and tidy, the only thing out of place a folded newspaper resting on the arm of a leather lounge chair. It was off to the left of the central passageway, doors on the right obviously opening into bedrooms.

Tom pushed the second door with his foot and it opened to show a pristinely neat bedroom, a single bed set in the middle, an old polished timber wardrobe on one side and French doors opening to the veranda on the other.

‘Do you want to wake him to do his teeth and change his clothes or should we just let him sleep?’

Lauren considered the question—letting the little boy sleep was obviously the best solution, but he might wake and not know where he was.

‘Not that I want to hurry you or anything but my arms might give way any minute,’ Tom said, and though there was a smile in the words Lauren knew Bobby must have grown very heavy in his arms.

‘I think we’ll let him sleep,’ she said, and she slipped past Tom and his burden and turned down the bed, then, when Tom put Bobby down on the clean sheet, she slid off his rubber flip-flops and pulled the top sheet over him.

Tom came forward and turned on a bedside light, using a button to dim it.

‘All mod cons in this place,’ he said, then he touched the little boy on the head and hesitated for a few seconds before following Lauren out of the room.

‘Your bedroom is this way,’ he said, pushing open the next door. ‘There’s a bathroom just beyond it, towels in a cabinet behind the door. Do you need anything else? Would you like a drink of some kind?’

Lauren shook her head, then common sense dictated she should ask.

‘I don’t suppose you’d have a blow-up mattress or a comfortable lounger? I’d like to sleep beside him in case he wakes up in the night and doesn’t know where he is.’

Tom smiled at her.

‘Great minds,’ he said. ‘I was intending to do just that, but if you’re sure then it would be better for you to do it as he doesn’t really know me except as someone who causes him pain when he lands in the ER after one of his wilder pranks. I do have a blow-up mattress from far-off camping days. I’ll get it.’

He was about to walk away, but Lauren caught his arm so he turned back to her.

‘Why?’ she asked, adding, when she saw the puzzled expression on his face, ‘Why were you thinking of staying with him?’

Tom’s smile was gone, his face now pale and grim, although it would be. It was well after midnight and he must be exhausted.

‘I was Bobby once,’ he said softly, then he slipped his arm away from her fingers and disappeared back along the passage and into what must be the front bedroom.

His bedroom!

I was Bobby once?

What did he mean?

And why was it suddenly very important to Lauren that she find out? Find out all she could about the enigmatic man she’d thought she knew …

Why had he said that?

Lauren was a psychologist—she’d want an explanation for a statement like that.

But would she ask?

Lauren, his friend, would have, but this Lauren was different.

Because he’d seen vulnerability in her for the first time in the eighteen months he’d known her?

Because he felt, not exactly proud, but somehow pleased that she’d trusted him enough to show that vulnerability?

So he’d shared a bit of his?

Oh, please! Enough with the psychological delving.

He reached up on top of his wardrobe for his old backpack, assuming his blow-up mattress would still be shoved inside or strapped to it. He hoped the rubberised material hadn’t rotted. If it had, Lauren was in for an uncomfortable night. Perhaps the reclining lounge chair would be more comfortable for her, although they would probably wake Bobby trying to manoeuvre it into the bedroom, and would it fit?

He tried very hard to concentrate on these nice trivial matters, but in his head the image of a little boy, younger than Bobby by a couple of years, tucked into a strange bed in a strange room—the first of a series of strange beds in strange rooms …

‘Tom? Can I help?’

Lauren was in the doorway and it was obvious he’d dithered for so long she’d had time to have a shower for her hair clung in damp tendrils to her neck, and she was wearing what must be one of the ugliest nightdresses ever created. A vague purple colour, faded from much washing, it had something he assumed were bunches of flowers printed all over it, and it hung, shapeless as a deflated balloon, from her shoulders.

‘Fetching, isn’t it?’ she said, smiling at the thoughts she’d obviously guessed he was having. ‘Maybe the hospital insists on the design—it’d work better than an old-fashioned chastity belt for randy staffers.’

Though not for him, Tom discovered. Standing there in his bedroom door, freshly showered, totally exhausted but still so temptingly beautiful, his body would probably have reacted if she’d been wearing a suit of armour.

‘You’d look good in a wheat sack,’ he told her, hefting the whole backpack down from the top of the wardrobe and turning his attention to finding the mattress, shaking his head in frustration when it failed to materialise.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m so tired I could sleep on a barbed-wire fence. It’s a warm night so if you wouldn’t mind lending me that puffy-looking duvet you have on your bed I can fold it, probably in three—is that a king-size bed?—and it will be fine.’

Looking at the bed was a mistake. He immediately pictured Lauren in it. And it was a king-size bed but right now he didn’t want to think about why he used a bed that size, let alone explain it.

‘Okay,’ he said, realising that the sooner he got Lauren tucked away in Bobby’s bedroom the sooner he could sort through the craziness inside his head.

Could he put it all down to seeing Bobby in that neatly made single bed?

Of course he couldn’t. It had started back with Lauren’s groan, and the strange sensation of … satisfaction? … he’d felt when she’d asked him to stand by her.

Not to mention his determination to find out more about the vulnerability he’d glimpsed in the woman he’d thought was so together.

He’d stalled again, standing in the bedroom, only vaguely aware of Lauren walking past him and hefting the duvet from his bed. He reached out to take it from her, but as he touched her arm she dropped it, and stepped over it so she was close enough to hug.

For him to hug her, although it didn’t happen that way.

It was Lauren who moved closer, Lauren who put her arms around him, slipping her hands beneath his shoulders so she could reach around his body, then she hugged him tightly to her, her head pressed against his chest, a whispered ‘Thank you for being there for me tonight’ rising up into his ears.

Then, just as he was certain she’d feel his body’s unacceptable reaction to the embrace, she pulled away, picked up the duvet from the floor, and left the room.

CHAPTER THREE

LAUREN shouldn’t have hugged him, she knew. Of course she shouldn’t, especially not without asking, but his words had sounded so bleak and there’d been such sadness lingering in his eyes as she’d stood at the bedroom door that she’d been unable to resist.

The problem was that now, lying on his folded duvet, smelling the man that had permeated it, she could still feel the tremors of—what, attraction?—that hugging him had startled into life. Tremors she hadn’t felt in years but still recognised for what they were—definitely attraction!

In truth, she had always been attracted to Tom—what woman wouldn’t be?—which was why she’d never accepted any of the invitations he’d offered when he’d first arrived in town. Attraction led down pathways she didn’t want to follow. Attraction led to trouble …

And disappointment.

Even disgust from one man she’d gone out with—a man who’d called her names that shamed her even now to think about, a man who had been disgusted when she’d tried to explain it was terror that had stopped her, not a desire to tease and walk away, definitely not a wish to anger him in any way …

Go to sleep, she told herself, trying to shut down her mind, knowing she’d need to be ready for anything the following day. Above her on the bed, Bobby stirred, and Lauren reached up to touch his arm, talking quietly to him, telling him she was there and she’d look after him, although she knew he’d probably moved in his sleep and couldn’t hear her words.

It was enough of a reminder of her responsibility to Bobby that it enabled her, at last, to stop thinking about tremors of attraction, and Tom, and the past, and drift into a deep sleep.

They were both still sleeping when Tom looked into the bedroom at eight the following morning. The revolting nightdress had ridden up so he could see Lauren’s long, slim, tanned legs curled into the folds of his faded navy duvet.

Could he wake up to Lauren underneath that covering? he wondered. Wake up close to her, not practically falling off the edge of his big bed the way he always had when women shared it?

He shook his head at the way his mind was working. It was lack of sleep, and the uncertainty of the outcome of the collapse of the stands, not to mention Bobby’s future, that was making him think things he shouldn’t think. He should go across to the hospital to see the patients they’d admitted, but he knew someone would have phoned him if he’d been needed and, besides, he was reluctant to leave the house without letting Lauren know where he was.

Somehow the sleeping woman and boy had become his responsibilities, and he, who’d shied away deliberately from any responsibility outside his work, was finding it strange but no less binding for that.

They’d have to stay—

‘Good morning? Have you been standing there all night? Scared one of us would wake up and pinch the silver while you slept?’

He looked down to see Lauren smiling up at him, golden hair tousled around her head, looking so unutterably beautiful and desirable his body did its unacceptable reaction thing again.

‘Well?’ the beautiful desirable woman on the floor prompted.

‘I just poked my head around the door to see if anyone was awake. Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?’

He had to move, get away, stop looking at her, so he hoped she’d say yes to liquid refreshment, but instead she shook her head, said a brief, ‘No thank you,’ then sat up and checked Bobby as she spoke.

‘But we do need to talk,’ she added quietly, standing so the nightdress hem fell down to cover those long, slim legs most discreetly, and walking quietly towards him.

He led the way into the living room, knowing she’d want to stay within earshot of Bobby.

‘So talk,’ he said, and smiled when she stared at him, confusion in her beautiful eyes.

‘Well,’ she finally said, frowning at him now, ‘I’m not sure where to start. Bobby first, of course, and probably we don’t have to talk about him because Mike might have found some relatives but I’d be—I’d be unhappy about letting him go into care if there are no relatives—not right now anyway. And I know I’m not making much sense but Bobby’s had a rough time of things lately, and somehow I’d like to think that even though he’s lost his mother, once he’s over that initial grief, his life might get better.’

The rush of words stopped abruptly and she looked directly at him, her gaze so deliberate Tom wasn’t altogether surprised when she asked, ‘What happened to you? Back when you were Bobby? Will you tell me? It’s not idle curiosity, I hope you know that, but if you’ve been where he is now, then maybe your experience will help.’

Lauren guessed immediately that he wasn’t going to tell her. It was as if he’d lowered shutters on his face, right there while she was watching him.

The memories must be bad—really bad for him to shut her out like that—and a tremendous sense of guilt that she’d pried swept through her.

Without further thought, she got up from her chair and went to sit on the arm of his, resting her hand on his shoulder.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ she assured him. ‘I should have known better than to ask. It was just that Bobby—well, you don’t have to say anything and maybe I will have a cup of tea and if you don’t mind staying here to listen for him, I can probably find my way around your kitchen and fix it for myself, would you like one?’

The words rattled out, her uneasiness added to by the tension she could feel beneath her fingers, Tom’s muscles as tight as steel hawsers. But as she stood, desperate to escape the terrible atmosphere in the room—the atmosphere she had caused—he caught her hand and pulled her back and she landed in his lap, her face close enough to see the lines of tiredness in his face and read memories he didn’t want to think about in his eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, touching that ravaged face.

‘Don’t be,’ he said, then he put his head down on her shoulder, slipped his arms around her body, and just rested there, holding her, until she felt his body relax and his lips, surprisingly, move against the skin on her shoulder in what felt like a kiss.

He lifted his head—it couldn’t have been a kiss—and looked her in the eye.

‘Do you believe in fate?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said, ‘well, not entirely. I don’t think every single thing in our lives happens for a reason, if that’s what you mean by fate.’

‘Neither do I, but with Bobby coming into our lives right now, I have to wonder.’

Our lives? Lauren thought, but she didn’t query it out loud. Tom had something he wanted to say and she didn’t want to divert his train of thought, although ‘our lives’ had brought her tremors back again and, given that she was still sitting on his knee, the tremors were likely to get the wrong idea.

‘My parents and my older sister were killed in a car accident when I was six. I survived and was taken in by Children’s Services until a relative was found—a grandmother I’d never met because my parents had been cut off from their families. Cue violins for real Romeo and Juliet family feud scenario but they didn’t die tragically young, my parents. They lived on to have two children then died.’

Lauren rested against him, wanting to hug him as she’d hugged Bobby, wanting to hug the six-year-old orphan Tom had been, but she held back, wary of distracting him from a story that sounded rusty, as if it was a long time since it had been told—if ever …

‘It didn’t work out with Grandmother, so Children’s Services were called in again—and again, and again, and again. I wasn’t the kind of kid foster-families liked—not quiet and biddable and appreciative of all they were doing for me. I was rebellious and loud and full of hate and denial. When I was fifteen I finally got lucky with some foster-parents who ignored all the horrible bits of me, and concentrated on some glimmer of good that no one else had found. Perhaps I hadn’t had it earlier, I don’t know. They were kind people—all of them were kind, in fact—but these two encouraged me to put all my anger and energy into my school work, hence the doctor you see before you.’

Long pause.

Should she break the silence?

But how?

Her mind had gone on strike back when he’d said ‘Grandmother’ and Lauren had envisaged a stern, upright woman who didn’t know how to handle a bereft little boy …

A granny or a nana might have known—would have known for sure—but a grandmother?

Unable to think of a single thing to say, Lauren rested against this man she’d never known existed inside the Tom she did know, and hoped her closeness might ease some of the pain this delving into his past had caused.

He didn’t seem to object. In fact, his arms tightened around her and they sat in warm, comfortable silence, and maybe would have sat like that all day had Bobby not let out a yell from the bedroom, which sent her scooting off Tom’s knee and hurrying in that direction.

‘Hi, Bobby,’ she said as she walked into the bedroom, her heart aching as she looked at the sleep-rumpled little boy.

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