12 Gifts for Christmas

She loved him.

She stared down at his beautiful face, so male and arrogant and uniquely Rafi, and she could not even manage to berate herself for that weakness as she had over these last months.

He had treated her terribly, there was no denying it. The parts of her he’d hurt still ached with it, and she thought sometimes they always would. But that didn’t change the man she knew was there, beneath all that, beyond what had happened between them. She still believed in that man. The honorable person who had vowed to protect her—and he had done so. Just not from himself.

“Lucy …” The way he said her name, with the faintest touch of his Alakkulian accent and that fire in his eyes, still undid her. Just as it always had.

She had lost so much and been so alone. She loved him. Tonight he was her husband. He would no doubt leave again as if he had never been, and she would return to England and reality—so what harm was there in treating this like all those dreams she’d had in all the lonely months she’d languished here, by herself?

She didn’t want to think anymore. She didn’t want to wonder and worry and rip herself to pieces trying to understand what had happened to this marriage, what had stolen this very connection away from them. Here, now, she just wanted to feel.

No matter how much she might live to regret it.

She bent her head and kissed him.

The fire between them blazed white hot. He pulled her closer, angling his mouth for a deeper fit, and then rolled her over, his hands moving to learn her curves anew.

And Lucy could do nothing but delight in it. In him. At last.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE snow fell all through the night, and into the next day. It cocooned them, Lucy thought sometime the next morning, gazing out at the drifts of white. It softened the reality of their fractured marriage, let them concentrate instead on what they had at that moment.

This connection. This fire. The insatiable wildness of their passion that nothing seemed to dim.

She shut off her mind and pushed away all the darkness of the past months, choosing to bask in Rafi as she had so long ago on that trip to Paris.

Through the day, they fed each other in the great four-poster bed. They tasted each other again and again. And they talked. About the world, about the small, inconsequential things that made up their lives. He was funny, intriguing. And so impossibly sensual.

If she had not already been in love with him, Lucy knew, this little interlude would have sent her head over heels.

But there was so much left unsaid, so much pain and heartbreak, that even a stolen day or two surrounded by the snow could not keep it all at bay. Perhaps it was her knowledge that this bliss could not—would not—last that made the idyll that much sweeter.

It was Christmas Eve, though Lucy had not dared mention it, aware of Rafi’s dislike of all things Christmas.

That evening, they sat before the great fireplace that dominated one wall in the master suite, both of them exhausted in the most delicious way. She leaned back against his bare chest as he toyed with her curls, twining them around his fingers.

I will always remember this instant, this feeling, she thought. No matter what happens.

“I wish we could be like this forever,” she said on a happy sigh, caught up in the joy of the moment—in the sense of rightness that moved through her.

She regretted the words immediately.

He stiffened behind her, then set her away from him. She closed her eyes as all the pain and hurt she’d been ignoring came rushing back, full force.

“I do, too,” he said in a low, bitter voice. “But I am not the one who made this impossible.”

Her hands curled into fists, and she turned to look at him. His gray eyes were so troubled, his mouth so grim. And he still glared at her as if he had every reason to hate her. And did.

It was too much.

Everything she’d been through, everything she’d struggled to survive—all of it rolled through her, incinerating her, scalding her.

“No. You did this, Rafi.” She threw the words at him, letting her anger show, letting him see what he’d done to her. “You destroyed this marriage, not me!”

“I’m not going to play your games,” Rafi said roughly, but he was shaken by what he saw in her eyes. The condemnation. The deep, abiding pain, as if he’d wounded her. But how was that possible? She was the one who’d betrayed him … hadn’t she?

He should never have touched her again. He should have crawled through the snow to stay away from her.

“Listen to me,” she said in a low, serious voice. Her eyes locked on his. “I am only going to say it once. I was pregnant.

I never lied about that—why would I? Did you think it was my life’s ambition to marry a man I hardly knew? To move to the other side of the world to a place where I’d be scrutinized, judged and found wanting every time? But I did it because I loved you and I thought it was the right thing to do for our child.”

“Our child,” he repeated, hearing the fury in his own voice, feeling it surge through him. “How dare you pretend—”

“I lost the baby,” she hissed at him, her brown eyes filling with tears. She jabbed a finger in the direction of the vast bathroom. “In that room. On that floor. It was horrible, and do you know what was worse, Rafi? Being told that you believed I’d made the whole thing up.”

“You said it yourself!” he snapped, his temper blazing as his mind reeled. But he remembered it vividly. “I was in Sydney. I’d had back-to-back meetings for weeks on end in Singapore, New Zealand, Australia. But I called you the second I could get away. I asked after your pregnancy and you said, as clear as day, ‘There is no baby.’ You admitted it.”

“I was grieving!” she protested. “There was no baby because I’d lost it!”

The tears were moving down her cheeks now and she did nothing to check them. She reached for the blanket they’d kicked aside in their last round of passion, and Rafi noticed that her delicate hands were shaking.

“Lucy—” he began, but she made a slashing gesture through the air, cutting him off.

“You made it plain from the start that I was marrying far above my station,” she said, each word like a bullet, each one slamming into him. “You made no secret of the fact that I was beneath you—that sleeping with me was all right for an illicit week in Paris, but should never have gone beyond that. That I should be grateful that you were so honorable, so good, that you would condescend to do the right thing by a trashy little nobody like me.”

“I never said that,” he bit out, as a deep shame moved through him. “Not any of it.”

“You didn’t need to say it.” Lucy gathered the blanket around her and rose to her feet, looking down at him as if she were some kind of goddess. “Everything you did made your position perfectly, painfully obvious.” She waved her hand at the room around them, encompassing the gleaming lights in the ancient sconces on the walls, the historic tapestries. “You hid me away in your family’s country house where I could gaze out at the capital city from afar but never embarrass you by setting foot near your exalted social circles. But I didn’t care, because I was in love with you and I was having your baby.”

There was something in her voice that was making the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention. He was all too afraid that it was the ring of truth.

“Lucy,” he said again. “Please …”

But she ignored him.

“You left me here,” she continued in that same way, as if it cost her, as if speaking to him like this required her to be brave. The thought made something in him ache. “And I saw it as a perfect opportunity to get to know your world. To transform myself into the kind of wife you wouldn’t have to hide away or be ashamed of.”

He remembered, suddenly, what she’d been wearing when he’d arrived—how elegant he’d thought her. How much of a change it had been from the louder, trendier clothes she’d worn before.

“But then I lost the baby,” she said, her voice shaking. “And I had to live through that, Rafi. Alone. And still you left me here, as if I was something undeserving of even the barest compassion.”

Her face crumpled for a moment, as if she might break down into sobs, but she controlled herself.

“Lucy,” he began again, but she shook her head, warding him off.

“I don’t care if the Qaderis don’t do divorce,” she said then, with a quiet dignity that shook him almost more than her earlier show of emotion. “I’m leaving you. Not because I don’t love you—because I do, for my sins. But it doesn’t matter. You may be descended from a hundred centuries of greatness, Rafi, but I deserve better than this. I deserve better than you.”

Rafi sat in silence, unmoving, for a long time after Lucy had left the room, more regal than any queen. He stared into the fire but he did not see the flames. He only saw the past, his tangled history with Lucy and all the conclusions he’d jumped to far too easily. That she’d been using him. That he had been enchanted by a beautiful woman, as any man could be. That she had set out to avail herself of his name and fortune. That the passion between them was not—could not be—real. That what he felt could not be real.

All along, the people around him had whispered poison in his ears—and he had listened. Safir. The country elders. He had wanted to believe them, he realized now. When she had told him there was no baby he had jumped on it, had clung to the evidence that she was as false as all in his circle wanted him to believe she was.

Because then he wouldn’t have had to admit that he was weak. That he was afraid of the power she held over him. Of what she made him feel.

What a despicable piece of work he was, he thought then, an acid taste in his mouth.

He remembered all the snide and nasty things he’d let Safir say about her, all the times he’d never stood up for her. What kind of man allowed such things? And then, unbidden, something else occurred to him. The repeated calls from the family doctor, which Safir had waved away, saying it could wait until Rafi returned home, all the while never encouraging him to do so. But what if it had been something else? Would Safir have told Rafi about something that would show Lucy in a better light?

He knew the answer. But he had to confirm the suspicion that bloomed to life inside of him. He had to know the full extent of his own betrayal of Lucy, who had never done anything save love him. Far more than he deserved.

Rafi moved across the room and picked up the sleek phone on the desk. Gruffly, not even apologizing to his housekeeper, he asked to be connected to the doctor, regardless of the late hour.

The kindly old man had attended his own birth and had kept any number of Qaderi family secrets in his time. And he had never lied about anything.

It was a brief, appalling conversation.

“I’m so glad you called,” the old man said, as if he had not noticed the time. “I’ve been trying to speak with you for months about that night. I wanted to assure you that I made every attempt to convince your wife to go to the hospital but she refused. She was too concerned about your reputation.” He sighed. “So I made her as comfortable as I could and made sure there were no complications. Please, I do not want you to think that her care was substandard, or that I did not do my level best to convince her to go to the hospital. She simply would not go. I thought perhaps you could convince her, but then I could not reach you… .”

“I don’t blame you for anything,” Rafi said through a mouth that felt made of broken glass. And it was no more than the truth. He blamed only himself.

“Sometimes these things happen,” the doctor said, the wisdom and calm of years in his voice. “She has been healthy since, and I’m sure you will have another child, in time. This is but a hiccup. I have every faith, both medically and personally.”

He had never hated himself more, Rafi thought as he hung up the phone in a daze. He could only stand there, alone with the shame of what he’d done to her.

Lucy was not lying. She never had been.

Had he known that all along, on some level? Had he wanted to believe that he’d never had a child at all so that he would not have to deal with the crushing sense of loss? Was he that small, that cowardly, that he would sacrifice Lucy to prevent himself from feeling his own pain?

But he knew that he was. That he had.

Rafi sank down on the side of the great bed, buried his head in his hands and gave in, finally, to the grief that he’d staved off for three long months.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THIS time when Lucy woke it was to find herself in Rafi’s arms.

For a moment, she forgot. She simply breathed in the scent of him, winter and pine, and exulted in the heat of his strong arms around her. But then she exhaled and it all came rushing back.

“Don’t do this!” she hissed at him, tilting her head away to look at him. His dark brows were drawn over his gray eyes, and his mouth was in a flat line. “Just let me go, Rafi.”

“If that is what you want,” he said in a low, gravelly voice, “I will. But there’s something I want to show you first.”

She couldn’t bear to meet his eyes—to let him see the effect his words had on her. It was one thing to announce she was leaving, to demand a divorce, to want those things. It was something else again to have him accept it. She felt something yawn open inside of her, black and lonely.

Perhaps that was why it took several long moments for her to recognize the change in her surroundings after he’d settled her on the overstuffed chaise in the book-lined library. She schooled her features as best she could and when she looked up …

It was Christmas.

Lucy could not help herself—she gasped.

A small, plump pine tree bristled in the corner, festooned with objects Lucy recognized—the tiny china figures from the display in the blue salon, the small ornamental picture frames that were usually scattered on the tables in the formal sitting room. It was as if someone had gone through the house and picked up whatever was small enough to be fastened to the branches and decorated the tree that way.

Lucy’s hands crept over her mouth as she took it in. She turned to stare at the man who had moved to kneel before her, his gray eyes serious.

“What did you do?” she breathed, enchanted despite herself.

“It’s Christmas, isn’t it?” His voice was gruff.

“You hate Christmas,” she pointed out, feeling lightheaded. Off balance. “You think it’s—”

“Let me tell you a story,” he interrupted gently, running his hands over her legs, gazing up at her. “Isn’t that how this goes? Is this how your mother used to do it?”

Lucy was overcome by the swell of an emotion she was afraid might tip her right over. She could only nod, mutely. She could not seem to tear her eyes away from his.

“I was up most of the night,” he said in a low voice, his eyes intent on hers, though his were dark, agonized. “It was obvious to me that you were telling the truth last night. Then I spoke with the family doctor, who reiterated everything that you had said, what I should have accepted all along. That you lost our baby, and I abandoned you in your pain. I can never possibly make that up to you. I will spend my life regretting it, Lucy. I promise you.”

She could not help the way her eyes glazed over with hot, unshed tears, nor the way her throat seemed to clutch tight. She was not sure she would ever breathe again.

“But as heinous as that was,” he continued, his own voice uneven, “I had to look at what was behind it. To the grief that I didn’t have the courage to face. And … and to acknowledge what an insufferable snob I’d become. How quick I was to use the circumstances of your birth against you—as if they were any more random than mine. As if either one of us had anything to do with it.”

Lucy sucked in a breath then. “You are a Qaderi, Rafi,” she said.

“Yes,” he said sharply. “I am the head of my family. My cousin will be king one day, and I have every intention of being the power behind his throne. So why should I care what Alakkulian society thinks of my choice of bride? When have I ever allowed outside opinions to dictate my own?”

“Never,” she said, her voice catching.

But she hadn’t thought she was worthy of him, either. Was that why his dismissal had hurt so much? Because she’d believed his low opinion of her was accurate?

“I let others poison me against you,” he continued, “like a man far lesser, far weaker, than I would like to believe I am would do.” His mouth tightened. “Safir will never work for me again. The others who dared speak against you will regret it. This I promise you.”

His warm hands found hers and held them, and he shifted closer, gazing at her in a way she was afraid to believe. Surely she was dreaming. Because she’d dreamed this—or something very like this—a million times before.

But he did not disappear when she blinked.

“I never saw you coming,” he whispered. “I looked up from the middle of my gray, dutiful life and there you were, Lucy. I had no idea how to handle it. I can’t possibly imagine the misery I put you through. I can never make up for it. If you want to leave me, you have every right and reason. I won’t fight you.”

Lucy could read the sincerity on his hard face, hear it in his voice. His strong hands clasped hers, but gently. She knew that if she pulled away, he would let her go immediately.

There was a part of her that wanted to do just that. A part of her that wanted nothing more than to hurt him. To make him pay. But that part was growing smaller by the second.

Because she loved him. Even after all he’d done, she loved him far more than she wanted his pain. Far more, even, than her own deep wounds. She had long believed that made her the worst kind of fool. But maybe, she thought now, just maybe love was bigger than foolishness, too.

“And what,” she asked, her voice the barest whisper, “if I don’t want to leave you, after all?”

Powerful emotion moved across his face then, making his beautiful eyes gleam silver. His hands tightened around hers.

“Then I will tell you that I love you,” he rasped out. “That I always have, from the first moment I met you. And I will never be ashamed of that again.”

She said his name and tasted salt, only then realizing that she was crying.

“I have never had any use for love,” he said urgently, hoarsely. “Marriage is supposed to be for political alliance. For power and greed. Love is for fairy tales.”

“And for us,” she whispered. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his forehead. “For us, Rafi.”

When she moved to his mouth, he met her. Their kisses were hesitant at first, then sweeter, hotter, longer. Lucy felt the fire build within her again, shot through this time with the wild joy that he loved her.

Rafi loves me.

She knew that life with this man would never be easy, but as long as he loved her, they could make it work. Would make it work.

And then there was no more thought, only sensation.

Much later, they lay stretched out in front of the fire in the shade of the makeshift Christmas tree he’d put together just for her. Rafi looked down into her face and shuddered slightly at how close he’d come to losing her.

“I don’t know how you will ever forgive me,” he said fiercely. “I will never forgive myself.”

Lucy smiled, her brown eyes shining with the love he did not deserve, the happiness on her lovely face humbling.

“You will have to work at it, I think,” she said, her voice light. She tangled her fingers in his hair, and drew him down to her. “Every day. It will be hard and difficult work, Rafi, but then, you are a very determined man. I have faith that someday, you will make it up to me in full.”

She was teasing, he knew, but he took her words with all the force of a blood oath. He met her gaze.

“I will,” he vowed. “Believe me, Lucy. I will.”

She searched his eyes for a moment, her own wide and gleaming, and then nodded. She smiled again.

“Then kiss me,” she whispered. “It’s Christmas.”

A Christmas Refuge

About the Author

REBECCA WINTERS, whose family of four children has now swelled to include five beautiful grandchildren, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the land of the Rocky Mountains. With canyons and high alpine meadows full of wild flowers, she never runs out of places to explore. They, plus her favourite vacation spots in Europe, often end up as backgrounds for her Mills & Boon® romance novels because writing is her passion, along with her family and church.

Rebecca loves to hear from her readers. If you wish to e-mail her, please visit her website at www.cleanromances.com.

Look for new novels from Rebecca in Mills & Boon®’s Cherish™ series.

CHAPTER ONE

Puerto d’Ara

A COLD winter sun glinted on the sign posted at the side of the treacherous snow-packed mountain road. Desidiero Pastrana, known to a few close friends as Des, glimpsed it just before the faded pink ball disappeared behind the majestic Pico d’Ara, which was 3,000 meters high. In the twinkling of an eye, light turned to dark. With Christmas only three days away, night fell fast over the Pyrenees.

Just after leaving the northern city of Jaca, where he’d been on business, Des had gotten that queasy sensation again. He hadn’t been feeling like himself for the past few days. It was probably something he’d eaten, or he’d come down with a cold. Either way, he was anxious to reach the year-round mountain resort village of Puerto d’Ara and call it a night.

Of all the hotels owned by the Pastrana family in the province of Aragon, he preferred the Posada d’Ara, a former 17th-century monastery that had since been converted into an inn. Only two kilometers from the border separating the Spanish and French Pyrenees, Des used it as a base to indulge his passion for climbing.

He was planning to do some winter camping and serious ice climbing over the next ten days. Then after New Year’s, he’d get back to work and sit down with Miguel Torrillas, the affable manager of the Posada d’Ara, to do the requisite end-of-year inventory. Des was the CEO of the Pastrana Corporation and known for his hands-on approach to running the company.

He was also known to his family for avoiding spending the holidays with them. He’d purposely arranged this trip so that he could skip Christmas with his family.

And, he thought, hopefully skip the reminders of last Christmas. A grimace crept over his dark Castilian features. At this time the year before, the woman he’d planned to marry had sued his corporation after he’d taken her climbing and she’d been mildly injured.

His fiancée hadn’t been a winter-sports person, but he’d wanted her to understand his passion for it. His skills could have compensated for her inexperience—but they couldn’t compensate for her utter refusal to heed his instructions while they’d been climbing.

After a few minutes on the mountain she’d suddenly told him she’d changed her mind and wanted to go back to the hotel. He’d asked her to wait for him, but in a huff she’d started off without him and slipped. He’d gotten to her as quickly as he could, managed to extricate her ankle from where she’d wedged it and rushed her to the clinic.

The doctor had said that it wasn’t a major injury and she should just stay off her leg for a few days to avoid the pain until it was gone. She’d left the clinic without speaking to Des.

A week later the corporate attorney for the Pastranas showed Des the petition from her attorney wanting restitution and compensation for his client’s injury. Des had been incredulous. His fiancée was suing him? He’d asked her for an explanation, convinced it had to be a mistake.