Christmas, Actually

He moved toward her, and she had to step back. “Why are you here?” he asked. “I made myself clear.”

“When you packed up everything you owned, quit your job and moved home because I was pregnant?”

Her tone, as sharp as a scalpel, sliced into him, but he and Sophie and her child would all fare better if he withstood the wounds. He set the tray on a table between two armchairs in front of the fireplace.

This might go more easily if she’d only shown up to extract a pound of flesh.

“Nothing’s changed,” he said. “What did you expect?”

She shut her eyes, and her face seemed to smooth as she breathed her stress away. He hardened his heart. He could not be around a child. Would not.

She opened blue eyes, more beautiful than he remembered. Two months, and seeing her made him as eager as a starving man contemplating a table groaning with abundance.

“I hoped to find the man I loved for nearly two years.” Her voice dragged his gaze from her eyes to her mouth. “The doctor who gives his all to save lives, the friend who never, ever walks away.”

“I walked.” He turned toward the door. “If that’s all...”

She followed, grabbing his arm. He would not shake her off. He wouldn’t risk hurting her.

“Sit down,” she said, her confusion a painful stumbling block. He was determined to stick to his decision, but he didn’t want to hurt her more than he had to. “For a few minutes, listen to me.”

Whatever she said wouldn’t change anything, but maybe, after he said no again, she’d go away.

Cold sweat raced down his spine.

CHAPTER THREE

SOPHIE POURED CIDER into both cups and took one, mostly to keep her hands occupied. “Let’s get this over with. I’m not even sure there’s a point in talking.”

Except she’d been nobody’s daughter all her life. Not even a name to peg her hopes or her resentment on.

“You’re finally hearing me,” Jack said.

She put one hand to her mouth, resting her index finger along her upper lip as her stomach heaved. She had yet to conquer morning sickness. Some women had it from conception to delivery. Hers seemed to be connected to stress. “You know that my mother kept my father’s name off my birth certificate?”

“I don’t want my name on the baby’s papers.”

Was he trying to make her despise him? It might work, if a small voice in her head would stop insisting he must have lost his mind. He had to have a reason.

“I came to tell you I won’t do that. It’s not best for my baby. I know nothing about my father or whatever family he might have had, except that clearly he was either ashamed or married or a coldhearted—”

“Those are the stories you’ve told yourself,” Jack said. “You can’t prove any of it.”

“Exactly. But when you’re the one who’s been rejected, it’s harder to pretend it doesn’t matter. If something happens to her later in life, if she needs medical records or—I don’t even know what—I’d like for her to have a name. I don’t know the man you’ve become, but I’m putting your name on the birth certificate.”

“You could have asked me that on the phone.”

She sipped the cider. It still burned her lips. “I said ‘tell you.’ I’m doing this, and you can live with it.”

“Don’t encourage her to dream up comforting stories about me,” Jack said, standing. “You’ll only make sure she’ll be hurt.”

Sophie tried to equate this guy with the loving, witty man she used to know.

Bringing her a pot of purple violets on a Tuesday evening just because he thought the color would look nice with her eyes. That pot still held pride of place on her nightstand.

“I don’t know how you can leave your own baby.” She went to the door and opened it for him.

“I’ve already spoken to an attorney about child support. I’ll be setting up the payroll deduction as soon as you deliver.”

“What a good idea. Once it’s set up, you won’t have to think about your daughter ever again.”

Despite her anger, she only wanted to know one thing. Why?

The question echoed inside her head. She heard it, but she must be holding it back. He didn’t even blink. He just walked away. Again.

She slammed the door so hard the whole house must have shivered. Nice pregnant women didn’t run at implacable men and pound their fists on feelingless backs. Nor did they break Esther Underbrook’s house.

Sophie bit her fist to keep from crying. As soon as her car was repaired, she’d get out of Christmas Town.

* * *

“ESTHER, I NEED to buy a new coat.” The next morning, Sophie had gone downstairs to breakfast, nibbled on a slice of toast and decided she’d walk off her frustration. No need to lurk around the B and B, whiling away the hours before her car was repaired. “Mine didn’t survive the accident.”

Esther refilled Sophie’s herbal tea. “There’s Dockery’s. Go around the courthouse and follow the green, where they’re starting to put up the decorations. You won’t be able to miss it. Dockery’s doesn’t put up their Santa until after Thanksgiving, but he’s been waving from the top of their pediment for a week now.”

Sophie’s hard heart softened. Maybe she could use a little Santa after last night’s dose of rejection. “Is the distance walkable?”

Esther looked over Sophie’s thick sweater and purple knitted cloche, mittens and scarf. “Maybe on the way back. I’m going to call you a cab for the drive over. ” She motioned for Sophie to follow her to the reception desk, where she shuffled among the pages for a map of downtown, and then drew in directions for walking back from Dockery’s. “Now you be careful. The sidewalks might be icy.”

The cab arrived in no time, and Sophie rode in the backseat, staring out the windows at the lighted snowflakes blinking on street lamps and the people attaching holly to a white picket fence around the long town green.

At Dockery’s, a tall Victorian brick department store that oozed decorum, Sophie hopped out. She was drawn to the Norman Rockwell–type window displays. The first showed a family around a tree decorated in rich reds and greens and the other, a family around the fireplace, popping corn to string on their still bare tree.

Sophie couldn’t just walk past. She ran her hand over her belly, promising her daughter she wouldn’t lack for love because she didn’t have a father. Sophie’s mother had probably made the same Christmas wish, and that hadn’t come true. Every child wanted to be wanted by her parents.

On the store’s third floor, Sophie rummaged through the racks until she found a coat she liked. While she was paying for it, she breathed in the fragrance of a fir tree tucked into the corner of the checkout desk.

“You hardly ever see real ones anymore,” she said to the woman running her credit card.

“Fire hazard, I guess, but we got special permission to use one on each floor for our elf trees.”

“Elf trees?” Sophie noticed the small white tags hanging from the branches.

“The children whose parents can’t afford much this Christmas were asked to fill out a card with their wishes.” She handed Sophie her receipt and pointed at the tree with her pen. “Each one of those cards is a wish.”

“If I buy something now, can I turn it in before I leave the store?”

“The collection boxes are supposed to show up sometime today, one at all the exits, but if you don’t find a box before you leave the store, bring your gift back to me, or drop it at Customer Service.”

“Thanks.” Sophie took a tag that said “Red coat with black buttons” in a childish scrawl. Someone had written on the corner of the tag that this was for a girl, size 4T, and jotted a code, which must identify the child.

Sophie remembered being annoyed with clothing when she was small. She’d wanted toys—a treasure trove of toys, stacked like a pyramid around the tree.

A bit embarrassed, she smiled at the cashier and headed for the escalator, where a sign directed her to the children’s section, on the second floor. She found a beautiful wool coat, cinched in at the waist, with a swirling skirt and a black collar to match the required black buttons. She added mittens and a scarf, in red with black trim.

In the toy department, she found a doll in a similar coat and jaunty hat. She picked up a notepad and crayons and a toy cell phone, a miniature pewter tea set and Lincoln Logs, which she would still play with herself if she had them.

There were no collection boxes on the ground floor, so she headed to Customer Service, where a man behind the desk eyed her pile of gifts with doubt. “You picked up a lot of tags,” he said.

“Just one. Can I get these wrapped?” Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was her own grief. But one little girl, size 4T, who was so mature she’d asked for a coat instead of toys, was going to receive a mini pyramid.

“Sure.” He leaned over the counter, pointing to the right. “Just around that corner.”

“Thank you.”

She persuaded the resident wrapper to do each item and then put them all in a bigger box, which she also wrapped in gorgeous red metallic paper that glittered each time the box moved. Sophie chose a white taffeta ribbon, and the woman performed a miracle of looping with it. The finished gift was so beautiful Sophie was tempted to believe in Christmas again. She meant to leave it at Customer Service, but the man behind the counter had disappeared, and she hated to leave the package just sitting there.

Maybe the collection boxes had shown up by now.

She was just in time. The store security guard was pulling a box covered in Santa-figured wrapping paper toward the revolving doors. Sophie carried her package to him, peering over the top to make sure she didn’t mow anyone down. “Will this fit?” she asked as the guard held out his hands.

“I think so. Good thing you got here first, though.”

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but could you make sure the bow doesn’t get crushed?”

“No problem. I’ll arrange it myself, and we empty the box every night at closing.”

Together, they set it inside.

“That was some wish,” the guard said. “What was it? A horse?”

Sophie laughed. “Just a coat.”

“In Kevlar?” He glanced up as the door behind her opened, and a familiar voice called out a greeting. “Jack, your first wish came true.”

Sophie whirled. “You’re collecting toys for children?” she asked. The irony tasted bitter and felt like poison.

Jack barely even blinked. “It’s a family tradition.”

“It’s a Banning trait,” the guard said. “I saw your brother, Nick, splicing wires on Main Street for those stars they hang on the lampposts, and your sister stopped by to round up my granddaughters for their first Christmas choir practice about an hour ago. Who’s your friend, Jack?”

“We’re not friends.” Sophie pushed past both men and hit the street. Let Jack explain her exit. All the better if he couldn’t.

Something about those toys had pushed her over the edge. She felt betrayed again, as if she still loved him. It wasn’t going to be enough, telling him his name would be on the birth certificate.

She’d thought she’d known Jack Banning, but that man had been a lie. A soldier who lived by the code of “Leave no man behind,” a doctor who cared more for his patients than himself, a man who didn’t know how to be dishonorable.

Sophie didn’t need his infuriating promise of financial support. She’d take care of her daughter, with love and everything else her child might need. But she might lose her mind if she couldn’t understand what had turned Jack into a stranger no sane woman could love.

CHAPTER FOUR

JACK STARED AFTER her, his only thought that she shouldn’t be walking on icy streets.

“You know the lady well?” Gary Cook asked.

“We’ve met.”

Sophie had him pegged. Except for one thing—she didn’t know that every time he touched one of those boxes, he heard the echoes of a child’s cry.

He opened the door and went after her. “Sophie.”

She didn’t stop. She didn’t look back. He’d tried to make her see her best choice was to stay away from him. Now that he’d succeeded, he couldn’t let her hurry through icy streets while she was so angry she might forget she was working with a different center of gravity.

“Sophie, let me give you a ride.”

“No, thanks.” She pulled a kind of beanie from her purse and tugged it onto her head.

He caught up with her. “You should be more careful. At least walk on the other side of the street, where the ice has had time to melt.”

She turned. Her anger hit him like a burst of heat, full in the face. She crossed the street, but she wasn’t trying to be safer. She just didn’t want to be near him.

Jack stopped abruptly. He’d succeeded at last. Since the night they’d discovered she was pregnant, he’d had one goal. Make Sophie happy to stay away from him. Make her forget him.

When he’d seen her after the accident, concern had surprised him. Fear had ripped through him, when he’d thought he’d turned off his emotions.

But now he’d made sure she knew nothing had changed. He hadn’t changed.

A car honked, and he discovered he’d stepped into the street. Jack waved at an angry Santa behind the wheel of a vintage VW van, and hurried to catch up with Sophie.

Santa ground his gears and honked again as he passed them. Sophie looked up, as startled to see Jack as she was to be harassed by Santa’s clown horn.

“What do you want?” She tugged at her mittens. “Need these, too? Maybe you don’t feel I should dress warmly, but you can hand out my clothing to your Christmas Town neighbors. I hope they’re not all hypocrites like you.”

“Hardly any of them,” he said. “Except Santa. Will you slow down?”

“I’m cold.”

“You’re pregnant. You might fall.”

She turned her face to his, rage sparkling like ice in her eyes.

Jack held up both hands. “Given the current...situation, the last thing I want to do is take toys to children, but it’s tradition. I can either do it or invite my brother and sister to diagnose me like you’re trying to.”

“That does make me feel like one of the community.” Sophie edged away from him. “I didn’t ask for your company, and I don’t want your help. Go back to putting on a show for the people here—they obviously don’t know the real you.”

“You don’t know me, either,” he said.

“Which works out for both of us, since you want to be alone.” Without another word, she whirled into a store and turned back to close the door in his face.

Sophie was wrong. When he was alone, memories crowded in, sharp-edged, growing ever more dangerous.

* * *

“ARE YOU SURE you’ll make it home for Christmas?” Marisa Palmer asked. Her concern was the first real warmth Sophie had enjoyed all day.

“I’m positive, Mom. There wasn’t that much damage.”

“But you’re sure you and the baby are all right?”

“Absolutely no sign of a problem.”

“You could always ask Jack to drive you home. A few hours in the confines of a car, and you might be able to extract the truth from him.”

“He’ll never explain,” Sophie said, “and I’ve spent too much time trying to understand. Maybe he was just the wrong guy for me, but I’m starting to think he’s definitely the wrong father for my baby.”

“I don’t want to believe that’s true,” her mother said. “He’s been a good man, but something’s happened. Well, keep me updated on when you plan to return, and drive carefully in the snow, okay? We don’t want another accident.”

“Uh-huh.” Sophie stood as a clatter and loud swearing outside dragged her to the window. A man was dusting himself off as someone else righted a fallen ladder. Bystanders were checking on another man, who seemed to be wearing one of the metal-framed Christmas stars that were going up on light poles all over town.

“Everything’s going to be all right. I raised you on my own. You never felt you were missing a father.”

The truth quivered on the tip of Sophie’s tongue, but she held it in. Her mom couldn’t change anything now, and admitting she’d felt abandoned—how much she’d envied her friends who’d casually talked about their dads—wouldn’t help anyone. “I’ll have you, too, Mom. We’re all going to be fine.”

“The three musketeers,” Marisa said, relief in her tone. “Don’t forget your seat belt. I have some research I need to do, honey. I’ll talk to you later. Or tomorrow.”

Her mother was head of the psychology department at Gaudy University, one of Harvard’s sister schools. In Sophie’s elementary school days, her mom had always been working and didn’t have time to join the class trips or show up bearing baskets of cupcakes. But she’d tried to make Sophie understand she could count on herself. She’d reminded Sophie she was loved.

And she would always find time for Sophie’s daughter. Better to be one of a group of musketeers than a lone ranger.

Sophie turned back to the dressing table and tucked her new cell phone and her electronic reader into her purse. She wanted to check on Tessie Blaylock.

* * *

SINCE JACK HAD arrived at the hospital, he’d performed one surgery on a collapsed lung and another to relieve pressure from a subarachnoid hematoma. After consulting with the physicians who’d be taking over his cases when they reached the treatment floors, Jack showered and started his rounds.

He was eager to check on Tessie. She’d be going home the next day, as long as her blood work improved.

Outside her room, Jack heard a familiar voice—light, sweet, melodic. A voice that refused to vacate his mind.

Sophie was asking Tessie a question, and the young woman responded.

“I think I remember you,” Tessie said. “You’re the lady I ran into. You’re a nurse.”

“I should have introduced myself when I came in. I’m Sophie Palmer.” She sounded different. More certain.

“My parents tell me I owe you my life.”

“We don’t need to go that far. Dr. Banning did the real work.”

“But you were there first, because of me, and you saved me anyway.”

Tessie’s tearful voice made Jack pause in the doorway. He couldn’t un-hear Sophie’s estimate of him. She had every reason to hate him, but she’d been professional.

Sophie sat beside Tessie’s bed. She was just pregnant enough that the chair forced her to sit at an uncomfortable angle. Funny, they expected patients’ family members to sleep in those chairs. She pushed one hand behind her back to brace herself, but her attention was on the girl, who was finally regaining her natural, healthy color.

Tessie reached out and Sophie put the girl’s palm in her own. “You don’t have to thank me. Just say you won’t ever text and drive again. Promise you’ll leave your phone in your purse.”

Tessie’s bandage was stark white against her skin, a reminder that she and Sophie had escaped serious consequences. Despite himself, Jack felt the tug of fear.

“I promise I will never touch my phone while I’m driving. I’ve been lying here wishing I could take back that one second when I picked it up, and thought I could type a quick text.”

For a moment, Jack returned to the heat of his own personal hell—possessing only one pair of hands, which couldn’t do half enough work in time to save his friends and soldier comrades.

Sophie let go, and he saw empathy in her eyes. He’d always admired the caring she brought to her work, to her life. “I’m glad you realize how bad it could have been, Tessie.”

His patient nodded, her gaze more somber than any seventeen-year-old’s should be. “I might have killed you and your baby. The police came by. They said they could charge me, because I admitted I was texting. My mom and dad are getting a lawyer.”

“That’s not Sophie’s problem,” Jack said, going into protective mode without thinking.

Sophie looked up, so startled she didn’t even seem angry with him. She reached into her purse, pulled out a silver case—so small and delicate one of Santa’s elves might have crafted it—and plucked out a business card.

“This has my cell number. If you need me to speak for you, I’ll tell them what I believe—that you’re sincere.”

Tessie’s face blanched. “Right now I don’t ever want to get behind the wheel of a car again.” She glanced from Sophie’s stomach up to her face. “My mom said you risked your baby’s life.”

Jack felt pain like thunder in his head. His mouth went completely dry. His spine seemed to lock in place, while his legs protested at being used.

He shot a glance at Sophie, but thankfully, she didn’t notice the perspiration dripping from his temples.

Without acknowledging him or his impulsive comment, she tucked in Tessie’s bedding with a nurse’s economy of movement. “I was in no pain and you needed help. Honestly, if my baby had been at risk, I would have chosen her over you without a second thought.”

A massive, unseen fist squeezed Jack’s rib cage. Of course she’d choose her child. He was counting on it.

Tessie sank against her pillow. “Thank you. That makes me feel less guilty, and I promise I won’t ever forget about the texting thing.”

Sophie took the girl’s water bottle. “I’ll get this refilled,” she said, staring him down.

Jack pushed away from the doorjamb, moving to the computer mounted near the bed. “I need to check your wound, Tessie, when your nurse arrives.”

* * *

SOPHIE MADE IT to the nurses’ station and set the bottle on the counter. “Can we get this refilled?” she asked. In her hospital, there was filtered water available. They must have something similar here, because a woman in green scrubs took the container away.

Sophie leaned on the counter, breathing. She didn’t allow herself to embrace the hope hovering at the edges of her awareness.

Jack’s defense of her had come out of left field, but it didn’t mean he’d changed his mind about being a father to their child. He’d broken a sweat as Tessie talked about the baby.

Was he concerned about their baby? Or any baby? He’d lost an eleven-month-old girl in a surgery in October. That was when the dreams had started.

“Here you go,” the nurse said, handing over Tessie’s water.

Sophie collected herself. No need to get confused about what she wanted, either. Jack might have tried for a second to protect her, but even if he’d meant it, even if he still cared for her, he could abandon her in the next breath.

It didn’t matter, but before she put Christmas Town in her rearview mirror, they both had to be certain what kind of man he’d become. Would Jack be a name on a birth certificate? Or would he come to his senses and understand the magnitude of the unexpected gift he was throwing away?

When she returned to the room, he was finishing Tessie’s dressing. Jack was one of the few surgeons Sophie knew who didn’t turn that duty over to the nurses. He smoothed the tape.

“That should do you, Tessie.”

The nurse gathered up the supplies. “Anything else, Doctor?”

Jack shook his head. “We’re good,” he said. The nurse left the room, closing the door behind him.

“Dr. Banning, my mom and dad are stringing lights on the green tonight. Do you think I could help them?”

He looked at Sophie as if she’d asked the question. “We all help decorate. A few years ago, the town council had to choose between fewer decorations, including canceling the pageant on Christmas Eve, or volunteering in shifts so we could cut the labor budget.” He made his notes on the screen beside Tessie’s bed. “I think you need to stay here another night. We had to transfuse you. We’ll do blood work again this evening and in the morning. If your levels are rising, you can go tomorrow.”

“I hate this place.” Tessie shifted in the bed, but grimaced as her arm pulled, reminding her of the life lesson her recklessness had taught her. “Not that I’m not grateful you fixed me up.”

“But the food is horrible, and you can’t have a nice hamburger or a chicken wrap or whatever teenage girls eat these days.” He touched a button that darkened the monitor. “You’re a week early for Santa’s daily visits, although I hear the nutritionists are lobbying for him to distribute fruit this year.”