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‘You’re puffing a bit.’
‘I walked up all those stairs. My great-grandson’s here somewhere, with my daughter. He’s waiting to see Father Christmas.’
This was where the man in the red suit must come when he was allowed a breather, Jack decided. There was a small table beside the chair with a carafe of water and some glasses.
‘Do you think I could have a glass of that water, dear?’ Mabel asked.
Denise did the honours. Jack stayed where he was, thinking through his options. If he could rule out anything serious, like a cardiac event, he could probably leave Mabel and escape downstairs. Or maybe they could take her downstairs. It was rather stuffy in this small, curtained space. He was in a corner and his back was right against one edge. Right beside the red velvet throne, judging by how clearly he could hear voices.
‘Hello there, dear. What’s your name?’
‘Holly.’
‘And how old are you, Holly?’
‘I’m six.’
‘And what it is you want for Christmas?’
‘It’s not just for me.’ The six year old girl sounded so earnest she was breathless. ‘It’s for Misty, too.’
‘Who’s Misty?’
‘My sister.’
‘And how old is Misty?’
‘She’s six, too.’
‘Oh … you must be twins.’
Santa didn’t sound half as bright as Holly, Jack thought. He still had his fingers on Mabel’s wrist and her pulse was jumping a bit. Maybe he should send for an ambulance. Just because she wasn’t experiencing any chest pain, it didn’t mean she wasn’t having a heart attack. The pulse was faint enough to make him concerned about her blood pressure as well. Of course, if she’d nearly fainted, it would have dropped considerably but it didn’t pick up in the next minute or so, he’d need to do something.
‘How old are you, Mabel?’
‘Eighty-three.’
‘Are you on medication for anything?’
‘Just my blood pressure. The doctor’s given me some new pills for it. I just started them yesterday.’
‘Hmm. That might well have something to do with how you’re feeling. Can you remember the name of the pills?’ he asked.
‘They’re in my purse. Oh, no … where is my purse?’
‘You must have dropped it!’ Denise exclaimed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll go and have a look right now.’
Jack watched with dismay as the saleswoman ducked through the curtain and disappeared. She might be gone for a long time and he could hardly abandon an elderly woman having a vagal episode, could he? He was trapped. Closing his eyes for a moment, he could hear that Holly was still chattering to Santa.
‘It’s cos we were born at Christmas. I’m Holly and she’s Misty. Like, you know, misty-toe.’
Misty-toe? Jack felt his lips twitch and some of his frustration evaporated. He was stuck for the moment so he might as well try and enjoy it.
‘And you and Misty want a daddy for Christmas, you said?’
A daddy? Jack blinked and started listening a lot more carefully.
‘Yes, please. Is that OK? Mummy says we don’t need one really but I’m sure she’d like it. You can manage that, can’t you? I told Misty you could. She wanted to come too but she’s too sick.’
‘Ah … I’m sorry to hear that.’
So was Mabel. Her head was up and she was clearly eavesdropping on the secret conversation behind them as well. At the mention of the sick sister, she looked straight at Jack. Horrified? More like … expectant.
As if he could do anything about it. He was a specialist surgeon, not a paediatrician. Unless they needed new body parts transplanted, he didn’t have anything to do with small people.
He had to admit he was getting curious about this child, though. It wasn’t hard to straighten a little and move his head to where there was a gap in the curtain that would allow him to have a peek.
He could see the back of Santa’s head and the arm that was around the child on his knee. He could see a mop of blonde curls around a very pretty face that was staring very intently at the man hearing her wish. She had the biggest, bluest eyes Jack had ever seen. Give her a set of wings and a little halo on a headband and this Holly would make a perfect Christmas angel.
How sad that she had a twin sister who was so sick.
Santa must be feeling the same way. He was certainly giving this child a little more time than others might have had.
‘She’s going to be all right. Mummy’s hoping she’ll get a really special Christmas present that will make her better, but you know what?’
‘What?’ The tone was wary.
Jack’s interest was firmly piqued. A special Christmas present that would make her better? It was the sort of thing a parent for a child waiting on an organ to become available might say. Bit much to expect a miracle before Christmas if they were on the kind of waiting list the majority of his patients had to rely on, though.
‘I think having a daddy would make her feel better. It would make us all feel better.’
‘I’ll … see what I can do.’
‘He has to be nice,’ Holly said firmly. ‘And kind. And he has to be really, really nice to Mummy so she’ll like him too. That’s my mummy over there, see?’
Jack’s head mirrored the turn that Santa’s head made. The woman standing beside the photographer was un-mistakeably Holly’s mother. An older version, really, with shoulder-length, blonde curly hair and a cute nose and, while it was far too far away to see the colour of her eyes, Jack just knew they would be as blue as a midsummer sky. Mummy was curvy in all the right places, too. In fact, it was a bit of a puzzle why she was alone. Looking like that, surely she’d be fighting off potential daddies? What man wouldn’t want to be really, really nice to her?
Apart from him, of course. He’d been there and done that and the failure was a huge black mark on a personal history that otherwise shone with achievement. A wise man did not repeat his mistakes.
Santa stared for a moment or two and Jack could hear him sigh as he turned back. Holly’s head turned as well. Far enough to catch sight of Jack peering through the curtain.
‘Ooh,’ she squeaked. ‘Who are you?’
Jack had to think fast. ‘Just one of Santa’s helpers,’ he whispered.
‘Are you a … nelf?’
‘Yes.’ Jack nodded. His smile seemed to come from a different place than usual. It felt … softer. ‘That’s it. I’m a nelf.’
‘Why haven’t you got a green hat?’
He was spared having to answer. The photographer was tapping his watch and the next woman in the queue was edging forward with a small boy who had a very expectant smile. It was clearly the next child’s turn to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas and Holly was distracted by the gentle nudge that was intended to dislodge her from her perch. Not that she was having any of it.
‘He has to be nice to me and Misty as well as Mummy,’ she told Santa hurriedly. ‘That’s ‘portant. Uncle Nathan liked Mummy but he didn’t like us, ‘specially when Misty got sick, so Mummy told him to go away and never come back.’
‘O-kay,’ said Santa. ‘I’ll keep that in mind. But now it’s time for—’
‘Mummy said she wasn’t sad because she loves us so much she doesn’t need anybody else. She said we’re the two best little girls in the whole world and I’m trying to be extra-good even when it’s hard and everybody’s crying because if you’re good, you get want you want for Christmas, don’t you?’
Why was everybody crying? Jack wondered. Was Misty’s case hopeless?
He glanced at Mabel. She was crying.
‘The poor wee pet,’ she whispered.
‘Mummy looks after everybody.’ The voice was wobbling now. ‘Me and Misty and Nanna. But there’s nobody to take care of Mummy, is there? I’m still too little.’
The photographer was talking to Holly’s mother, who nodded and marched forward.
‘Come on, Holly. You’ve had your turn now.’
‘But—’
‘No “buts”. Come on, we’ll go and find that shortbread for Nanna.’
It was a grown-up version of the determination he’d been hearing in Holly’s voice.
‘Merry Christmas,’ Santa intoned, but he didn’t sound nearly as jolly as he probably should. ‘Ho, ho, ho.’
Denise came back. She had a middle-aged woman with her who turned out to be Mabel’s daughter.
The elderly woman was feeling much better. Her daughter said they were going to go straight to the doctor’s on the way home. She thanked Jack profusely for his medical assistance. So did Denise as she dashed back to her duties.
Jack was free at last. He escaped from the back of the grotto. Heading for the stairs, he passed Denise, who’d been stopped by a customer’s query.
The customer was none other than Holly’s mother. Holly gave him a suspicious stare and must have communicated something through the hand she was holding because her mother turned her head to stare at him as well.
The eye contact was like nothing he’d ever experienced in his life. As though they knew each other. Intimately. A prickle of something he couldn’t identify traced the length of his spine. His step faltered inexplicably. He covered the odd blip by glancing at his watch and seeing the time was more than enough incentive to keep moving. He had no choice, if he was going to have any chance of making his meeting on time.
Weirdly, what he was feeling now was a strong sense of disappointment. Because he would never know the end of the story about Holly and Misty and whether they would get what they wanted for Christmas.
No. It felt like more than that.
Almost as though he’d just lost something.
Something ‘portant.
‘He’s not really a nelf,’ Holly muttered. ‘He hasn’t got a hat and he’s too big.’
Lizzie was only half listening because Denise was trying to direct her to where she would find the shortbread she needed to take back to the hospital.
Who was too big?
That astonishingly good-looking man who’d just given her the oddest look? He had the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen. Chocolate brown and … interested? No. It had been more than the kind of appreciative glance she was used to getting from men. It had been more like he was surprised to see her here. As if he knew her from somewhere else. That thought was just about as strange as whatever bee Holly had in her bonnet about elves.
If she’d met him before she would have most certainly not forgotten the encounter.
Keeping a firm hold on her daughter’s hand, Lizzie went in search of shortbread. Holly was happy and so was she. In a little while their mission would be accomplished and she could get back to where she really needed to be.
Maybe later … much later, when she had a minute or two to herself, she would indulge in remembering those dark eyes. Relive that frisson of something amazing that she’d felt in that heartbeat when his eyes had touched hers.
A secret smile tweaked the corner of Lizzie’s mouth. She’d have to save it for later but there was no reason not to indulge in a harmless little daydream. After all, who didn’t need a touch of fantasy in their lives now and then?
CHAPTER TWO
THIS was payback.
On a cosmic scale. Punishment for the very real pleasure Lizzie had found last night, dreaming about a pair of chocolate-brown eyes.
She had never expected to see them again. Certainly not at close range. But here they were, on the other side of Dr Kingsley’s desk.
‘Who are you?’
Oh … Lord … It was supposed to come out as ‘Who are you?’ and not ‘Who are you?’, as if she remembered him and was desperate to know his name.
He wasn’t smiling. In fact, he was giving her the same kind of odd look he had when he’d passed her in Bennett’s department store yesterday.
‘I’m Jack,’ he told her. ‘Jack Rousseau.’
His voice was as smooth as the rich chocolate his eyes made her think of. Just as dark, too. And there was a subtle hint of a very attractive accent. Rousseau? Was he French?
Lizzie’s mouth went curiously dry and she dropped her gaze instantly. Not that it helped. He had both his hands on the desk, fiddling with the disc of a stethoscope lying on the blotter. Long, shapely fingers and hands, the backs of which were dusted with dark hair. Absolutely masculine hands but they looked very clever.
Sexy hands. Like the rest of this man whose name meant nothing to her. He was a complete stranger despite this odd feeling that she knew him. A two-second encounter in a crowded shop couldn’t account for this feeling of familiarity but illicit fantasies in the privacy of her own bed certainly could.
This was appalling. She had to say something before her hesitation became any more obvious but Lizzie could feel a blush of gigantic proportions blooming. She felt somehow exposed. Vulnerable. Backed into a corner simply because she’d done a tiny thing for her own pleasure.
There was only one thing for it. She needed to come out fighting. Her chin rose sharply and she met those dark eyes directly.
‘Where’s Dr Kingsley?’ she demanded.
As if to answer her sharp query, the door of the consulting room burst open.
‘I’m so sorry, Lizzie,’ Dave Kingsley said. ‘I wanted to be here to introduce you to Jack myself.’ He sent an apologetic smile to the younger man as he pulled another chair to that side of the desk. ‘Didn’t mean to abandon you for so long either.’
‘Couldn’t be helped,’ Jack Rousseau said graciously. ‘Emergencies happen.’
‘Car accident to a patient of mine who had a transplant five years ago,’ Dave explained to Lizzie, before turning back to his new colleague. ‘Looks like he’s damaged the kidney, unfortunately, along with messing up his spleen and liver.’
