Sarah Morgan - The Magic Of Christmas

His eyes slid over her body, lingering on the revealing lines of the silky bodice, which she knew was barely decent. Only a few transparent pieces of net and tulle protected her from his scrutiny and she felt her whole body become warm.

Their eyes locked and for a moment neither of them spoke.

The entrance to the grotto felt oppressively hot and suddenly Lara couldn’t breathe properly.

‘Daddy?’ Breathless with excitement, Aggie appeared in the doorway. ‘ Come on! It’s our turn!’

It took him a moment to answer. ‘Yes, sweetheart.’ Christian dragged his eyes from Lara’s and finally released his iron grip on her wrist. ‘Let’s see Father Christmas. We can talk about this later.’

‘We don’t need to,’ Lara muttered. ‘Honestly, as far as I’m concerned, we can consider the subject closed.’

But the look he shot in her direction indicated that he considered the subject to be far from closed.

Wishing her knees would stop shaking, she led him through to the grotto and laughed aloud at the look of naked incredulity that flickered across his handsome face as he took in the metres of red satin and tinsel and the fake snow. She’d had the same reaction when she’d first seen the interior of the grotto. But the children loved it. Aggie was already sitting next to Father Christmas, her eyes sparkling and her list in her hand.

‘Aggie, take your feet off the seat,’ Chloe murmured, but her little sister ignored her.

‘My feet are clean because these are my absolute bestest shoes.’

Chloe sighed. ‘It’s “best”, not “bestest”.’

Aggie ignored her. ‘My list is quite long so I hope you’re not in a hurry, although it doesn’t really matter if you are because I can talk very quickly.’ She snuggled a little closer to Father Christmas, her smile wide and her gaze trusting. ‘It’s not all for me. Some of it’s for other people. So I hope I can have a bit more time because I’m doing the talking for three and that’s a lot of people. Is that OK with you?’

Father Christmas blinked several times and his mouth twitched under his thick white beard. ‘That’s fine with me.’

‘I have a list here. Do you want to read or shall I just tell you?’

‘Aggie, just stop talking ,’Chloe breathed, folding her arms across her chest and sending a mortified glance towards her father. ‘She never stops talking. No one else has a chance of speaking!’

Lara watched the girls and felt envy slide through her body. Christian Blake had a noisy, loving family. Two gorgeous children.

One day, she promised herself. One day maybe she’d find a man with no flaws and it would be her queuing to see Father Christmas with her two wonderful children.

Or four, she thought with humour, if the psychic turned out to be right. Mindful of the queue building outside, she stepped forward. ‘Let’s hear your list, Aggie.’

‘OK. Well, I’d really, really like a pet but I know I probably won’t get that because Daddy always says that, if I can’t even keep my bedroom tidy, how am I ever going to clean out a cage?’ Aggie peeped at her father hopefully but the measuring look that Christian gave her in return was sufficient for Lara to know that pets was a subject that had been discussed and dismissed on many occasions. ‘No pet, then,’Aggie murmured, subsiding in her seat, ‘but if I really can’t have a pet then there are other things…’ She read out a lengthy list, ignoring Chloe’s worried glance towards the clock on the wall. Then she handed the list to Father Christmas. ‘I’ll give you this so that you don’t have to remember it all in your head. It’s in order, but just to remind you, my best thing would be the bike. And help unpacking the rest of the boxes in my bedroom because since we moved to our new house I can’t find any of my favourite toys, which seems a terrible waste.’

Father Christmas nodded slowly. ‘Well, I think I got all that. What about your big sister? What does she need?’

Chloe flushed. ‘Nothing.’

‘Go on, Chlo,’ Christian urged quietly. ‘What do you want, sweetheart?’

Lara glanced towards him, surprised by the warmth of his voice. At work in the emergency department he delivered instructions and commands in a detached, almost cold tone. He was reassuring to patients when the situation demanded it, but no one would have described him as touchy-feely. In fact, some of her colleagues had commented that Christian Blake was a machine, completely incapable of feeling emotion.

But she knew now that they were wrong.

Christian Blake wasn’t incapable of feeling emotion.

‘I know what she wants,’ Aggie whispered, kneeling up on the seat so that she could whisper in Father Christmas’s ear. ‘What she wants is for Alex Gregg to ask her to dance at the school disco. Can you fix that?’

‘Aggie!’ Visibly embarrassed, Chloe turned to her father in horror. ‘Can’t you stop her talking? All she ever does is talk!’

Aggie’s eyes were wide. ‘You do want that, you know you do! And there’s something else.’ Undaunted by her sister’s quelling look, Aggie smiled happily up at Father Christmas. ‘Just one more thing, and it isn’t for me.’

Father Christmas stroked his beard. ‘Who is it for this time?’

‘My dad.’

Christian tensed. ‘Aggie, I don’t need anything,’ he said swiftly. ‘And that’s enough now. It’s someone else’s turn to talk to Father Christmas.’

‘No. It’s your turn but I know you won’t ask for yourself.’ Her chin set at a stubborn angle, Aggie turned back to Father Christmas. ‘Daddy needs a new wife. You see, our mummy left us.’

A shocked silence descended on the grotto.

Stunned by that unexpected revelation, Lara couldn’t speak or move.

Then Father Christmas cleared his throat. ‘She left you?’

‘Yes.’ Apparently unaware of the tension around her, Aggie continued. ‘So now we don’t have a mummy and that makes it really hard at home. We have nannies or housekeepers but they’re not the same and daddy works so hard in the hospital and that’s why we haven’t unpacked the boxes yet. What he needs is a miracle. I read about them in a book. A miracle is something amazing that changes everything. If I’m extra-good between now and Christmas, could I have a small miracle?’

Father Christmas appeared to have been struck dumb, so Lara stepped forward, blinking back the tears that had somehow sprung into her eyes.

‘The thing about life, Aggie,’ she said softly, trying to keep the choke out of her voice, ‘is that you never know where the next miracle is going to come from.’

‘Well, I don’t care where it comes from but I know it has to come soon . My friend Katherine at school—her mummy went to heaven and now she has a new mummy but I don’t know where she came from. I want to get Daddy a new wife. I want to do an advert like we do for the nannies, but he won’t do an advert.’

‘She needs to be gagged,’ Chloe muttered, shrinking against her father, her expression acutely embarrassed. ‘It’s the only way. I’m buying her a massive gag for Christmas. And it’s not coming off until she learns that silence is golden.’

Christian rubbed a hand over his face and gave a slow shake of his head, clearly struggling to calculate the best way of handling the situation.

‘What’s gagged?’Aggie looked puzzled, clearly oblivious to the tension that her innocent request had created. ‘I just want something nice for Daddy. What’s wrong with that?’

Expecting Christian to be furious by his daughter’s very frank and public admission, Lara stole a glance in his direction. But she didn’t see anger. Instead, she saw concern, gentleness and a touch of sadness. A lump settled in her throat as she watched him step forward and lift his little girl into his arms.

‘I don’t need a new wife. That isn’t the answer.’ His voice was soft and he stroked a hand over his little girl’s blonde curls. ‘And I don’t understand why you’d think that, Aggie. We’re doing fine, aren’t we? What’s wrong, sweetheart? What’s missing?’

‘It’s just that I don’t want you to be lonely. You need your own special friend,’Aggie whispered, sliding her arms round his neck. ‘Chloe has Anna and I have Katherine, but you don’t have anyone all for you. If you had a wife, then you’d have someone.’

Christian hesitated. ‘It isn’t that simple.’

‘You mean because of us? Mummy left because of us, didn’t she?’Aggie’s voice wobbled and she clung to her father like a monkey, her head on his shoulder. ‘It’s my fault because I talk so much. I do try not to talk but then I sort of want to burst.’

Lara blinked rapidly to try and clear the tears that threatened to obscure her vision. Should she leave the grotto? She knew that Christian Blake was a fiercely private man. He never, ever talked about anything personal. He must be horrified that his little daughter had made such a frank confession in front of a colleague.

But Christian wasn’t looking at her. In fact, he didn’t even seem aware of her presence. His only interest seemed to be in his little daughter and her feelings.

He hugged her tightly, holding her easily in his arms. ‘Aggie, sweetheart, that’s enough now. Father Christmas doesn’t need to know all the details of our life.’

‘Father Christmas doesn’t dish out wives and mothers.’ Chloe cast a worried glance towards her father and reached forward to grab Aggie. ‘I’ll take her. Come on, you. We’ve finished here. We need to go home because Daddy needs to go back to work.’

They posed for the obligatory photograph and then Chloe led Aggie outside.

Lara didn’t move.

She didn’t know what to do or what to say. She felt as if she’d been eavesdropping on a private conversation. As though she’d witnessed something that she shouldn’t have witnessed.

She’d assumed he was happily married. Everyone had assumed the same thing. There had been no hints that his private life was in turmoil.

Was he separated or divorced?

What had gone wrong?

‘Daddy!’ Chloe burst back into the grotto, her blonde hair flying around her face, her tone urgent. ‘You have to come now ! There’s a sick girl out here. She was in the queue and then she sort of dropped to the floor and now she’s sort of shaking! You have to come!’

A SICK girl?

Lara glanced at Christian but he was already moving towards the grotto entrance, his response as swift and decisive as it would have been in the emergency department. ‘Lara. Come with me. Chloe? Keep an eye on your sister.’

He strode out of the grotto towards the little crowd that had gathered, his black coat swirling around his legs as he walked.

‘Someone, help us! Help us!’White with terror, the mother was on her knees by the little girl, trying to lift the child as her little body jerked. ‘Olivia? Olivia?’ The little girl’s body jerked and convulsed beneath her hands and the mother started to sob and scream. ‘She’s having some sort of fit.’

‘Don’t hold her. Don’t try and restrain her or you might hurt her. I’m a doctor.’ Christian dropped to his haunches and put a hand on the mother’s shoulder. ‘Lara, can you get these people away from here? We don’t need an audience.’ His voice was sharp and Lara immediately moved everyone back and then dropped to her knees next to him.

‘Someone is calling an ambulance.’