A Doctor's Christmas Family Read online

  Esther was more than tired. The emotional content of the day had exhausted her, and she was more than happy to obey Bill’s order. Though, as she drifted off to sleep, she wondered what might have happened if Chloe had not been so upset. Would Esther still have been relegated to the spare bedroom?

  It’s just the beginning, she reminded herself, but the baby’s behaviour had reminded her of other things. No matter what Bill said, Chloe would be a large part of the equation of their relationship. And Chloe’s needs and demands, at least while she was still an infant, would have to be accommodated by both of them.

  Would she, Esther, come to resent the time Bill spent with Chloe?

  Be jealous of a baby?

  She didn’t think so—after all, the little one had already wormed her way into her own heart…

  Gwyneth came home the following day. She was frail and needy, but obviously hated admitting she needed help, so Esther tried to aid her in unobtrusive ways, keeping Chloe quiet when the older woman was sleeping, making sure the meals she served were small and appetising.

  But with two convalescing invalids in the house, Esther was busier than ever so, apart from seeking a few minutes’ refuge in Bill’s arms when he returned in the evenings and a goodbye kiss in the mornings, the pattern of their relationship was stagnant.

  Though now Esther was too tired to lie awake at night, thinking of him sleeping so close, yet so far away, and it was Bill going through the tortures of frustration, whispering in her ear in the morning that they had to get away together.

  Alone together.

  Soon!

  And though Gwyneth never acknowledged her efforts, Esther sensed an unbending in the older woman, and their conversations became more relaxed.

  ‘Almost normal,’ she told Bill, as he poured her a glass of wine before taking one into his mother’s bedroom to spend some time with her before she went to sleep.

  ‘That’s good, because as soon as she’s well enough to look after Chloe for a few days, you and I are going away to a five-star resort where you can be cosseted and cared for, and in between cosseting we’ll start to make up for all the loving time we’ve missed out on.’

  It was a promise that kept Esther going as Christmas grew closer and she was torn between hope that this Christmas might be different and her old dread of the season.

  The dread won the day she mentioned to Gwyneth that perhaps they should get a tree.

  ‘After all, it’s Chloe’s first Christmas.’

  ‘I was never one for a lot of fuss at Christmas,’ Gwyneth said.

  And some evil spirit inside Esther prompted her to say, ‘I know.’

  She regretted it the moment the words were out, but couldn’t take them back. But rather than seizing the moment to attack, Gwyneth reached forward and took one of Esther’s hands between her own frail ones.

  ‘William’s father left me at Christmas,’ she said, stroking her fingers down the back of Esther’s hand. ‘I didn’t ever tell William that, and he was too young to remember, but I didn’t realise until your accident that I’d subconsciously taken it out on him. Not celebrating properly. Claiming it was an over-commercialised ploy to make people spend money a lot of them didn’t have. I told him birthdays were more important, and we celebrated them, but Christmas, in William’s childhood, was a bleak affair.’

  Gwyneth paused, and though Esther was surprised by this confession, she now understood why Bill had refused, all those years ago, to get excited over Christmas.

  Which was why she’d been so determined to make it special…

  ‘Marcie understood that.’

  The statement was so unexpected Esther withdrew her hand and peered at Gwyneth, thinking maybe she’d misheard the words.

  ‘What does Marcie have to do with bleak Christmases?’ she asked, when peering at Gwyneth failed to reveal a hidden meaning.

  ‘She always hated Christmas. When she was little, her parents made her dress up as an elf and hand out Christmas presents to all her father’s employees. People pinched her cheek and told her how cute she was. It went on for years and she grew to dread it.’

  Esther found herself smiling.

  ‘You make her sound almost human,’ she joked, but it failed to raise a smile with Gwyneth.

  ‘Then I’m wrong. I was always sorry for Marcie—for the life she led. She was far too rich, spoiled rotten by both her parents, but starved for love. I don’t know if she recognised that same hunger in me, or if we were just kindred spirits, but we were always friends in spite of our age difference. I suppose because I felt so sorry for her.’

  Gwyneth paused, then she leaned forward.

  ‘But don’t ever credit Marcie with normal feelings, Esther. Don’t think because you and William are happy being reunited—and don’t deny you’re both thinking that way, I’m not blind—that Marcie will be pleased. She may not want William, but she’s never wanted anyone else to have him.’

  ‘But they’re divorced,’ Esther protested. ‘What can she do?’

  ‘Take Chloe.’

  Two simple words but they sounded like a death knell in Esther’s heart. It had been her fear when Gwyneth had spoken to her about Chloe in the hospital, but the fear had been set aside when Bill had told her about the divorce. Surely with the divorce came custody of Chloe.

  Surely…

  ‘But she wouldn’t!’ Esther spluttered. ‘Couldn’t! She doesn’t want a child. If she did, why leave Bill?’

  Gwyneth shrugged and it was obvious she was very tired. Esther felt guilty that she’d talked so long, tiring the woman out, but another part of her wanted to shake the answers out of her.

  Though were there any answers?

  Right now, all she could think of were questions.

  Would Bill one day have to choose between Esther and the baby he adored?

  Could Esther allow him to be put in that position?

  She didn’t know the answer, but knew she’d have to find it. And until she did…

  That night when Bill came home, she didn’t greet him with a kiss—pretending to be busy with the evening meal.

  Bill watched her poke at something on the stove, aware she was avoiding him, wondering if he’d given her too much time to think.

  But how could he have furthered his courtship of such a sensitive woman, while they were both living under the same roof as his mother and his child?

  He poured Esther a glass of the white wine he knew she liked, touched her briefly on the shoulder and went to spend time with his mother. But later, after they’d had dinner and he’d put Chloe to bed, he caught Esther by the hand and took her out onto the balcony.

  Bother tiredness and family complications—they needed to talk.

  Actually, he was of the opinion they needed to do more than talk, but he didn’t think tonight was the night to suggest that!

  Beneath them, the city was starting to come back to life, lights appearing where none had been a week earlier. There was even a string of coloured lights along the foreshore.

  ‘Someone’s pleased it’s Christmas,’ Esther said, and Bill took her in his arms and held her close.

  ‘Is that what’s bothering you? Will Christmas always be an agonising time for you?’

  He felt the movement of her head against his chest and waited, knowing Esther’s innate honesty would eventually compel her to tell him what was troubling her.

  She eased away, lifting her head and pressing kisses on his neck, then on the tiny scar behind his ear.

  Had she remembered how tender that spot was? How it drove him mad? He swept her closer, wanting kisses now—troubled thoughts forgotten.

  ‘Do you have absolute, definite, incontestable custody of Chloe?’

  The question slammed out of left field, jolting him first out of the nicely building sexual excitement then back to where they’d been when he’d come home.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ he parried, aware this could be a conversational minefield.

  ‘Because I wan
t to know.’

  She pulled away from him and went to stand by the railing, looking out over the darkness and the odd sprinkling of lights.

  He didn’t answer straight away. Couldn’t answer, really, because so much had happened in the last week he wasn’t sure there was an answer. He moved to stand beside her, not touching but breathing in the special essence that was Esther.

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ he said. ‘I have custody, yes, but I doubt any custody arrangement is ever incontestable. I suppose I’m more fearful now, knowing I’m not Chloe’s biological father. I don’t know if Marcie knows this—if she used me when she married me. If she does know, then she could play that card if she decided she wanted custody. Or even if she suspects, she could use it—demand DNA sampling if she wanted to prove I wasn’t Chloe’s father.’

  He paused, wondering why Esther, who was usually sensitive to others’ feelings and so protective of her own, was probing this new wound of his, forcing him to talk of things he would prefer to ignore.

  ‘And you could lose Chloe?’ Esther persisted.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I could,’ he admitted, growling out the words because the thought was beyond imagining. ‘But not without a fight and, really, I don’t see that I would automatically lose custody just because Marcie wanted it. I’ve brought Chloe up from the day she was born. That has to count for something with a court.’

  ‘As much as blood?’ Esther said quietly, slipping away from him and walking back inside.

  Esther was gone when he returned the next evening.

  His mother provided the explanation.

  ‘She said she had a lot of work to finish before Christmas, and now I was so much better, with Sarah’s help—she’s got that nice Sarah from the crèche to come in every day—I could manage Chloe.’

  ‘And you let her go,’ Bill raged at his mother.

  ‘It’s not as if she’s gone to Africa or somewhere. She’s just gone back to the hospital. It’s a wonder you didn’t see her there.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t and she had no right to go.’

  He peered suspiciously at his mother.

  ‘Have you upset her? Been saying things you shouldn’t? Honestly, Ma, if you have, I’ll put you on the first plane back to the States. Esther got both you and Chloe through dengue. She got me through, too, keeping me going when both of you were so sick. I love her, Ma, I always have, and I thought she was ready to admit she still loved me.’

  ‘Maybe she thinks you love Chloe more,’ his mother said, which made no sense at all.

  ‘It’s not a contest,’ he growled. ‘I can’t compare the love I have for Chloe with how I feel about Esther. Why would I?’

  His mother looked embarrassed, then she sighed and he realised he’d been growling at a woman who was still far from well. But there was something going on, and he was going to get to the bottom of it, and if his mother wouldn’t tell him, he’d have to find out from Esther.

  He fixed their evening meal, fed Chloe and put her to bed then, as soon as she was asleep, he told his mother where he’d be and left for the hospital.

  Esther was in the little office on the sixth floor—not that far from the office he’d been in only a couple of hours earlier.

  ‘You missed your glass of wine so I brought some up,’ he said, entering the room and looking at the pale, tired woman sitting rigidly still behind the desk.

  ‘I need to think, Bill,’ she whispered.

  ‘No, you need to talk,’ he told her. ‘Enough of this bottling things up and tucking yourself away behind that armour. That’s finished, Esther. So out with it? What’s bothering you? I know from your questions last night it’s to do with Chloe. Can you not love her?’

  Esther stared at him, unable to believe the question.

  ‘Not love her? Can I not love her? How could you ask such a thing when you’ve seen me with her, seen my heart almost breaking with the love I feel for her?’

  ‘I can ask because you won’t talk about things,’ Bill said bluntly. He’d been operating a corkscrew and now gave a sigh of satisfaction as the cork popped out of the bottle. He pulled two glasses from the bag he carried and filled them both, pushing one across the desk to her. ‘So, if it’s not that she’s impossible to love, what is it? Is it that I’m impossible to love?’

  Esther picked up the glass and sipped at the wine, then realised a sip wasn’t going to be enough. She gulped, choked, coughed, allowed Bill to pat her on the back, then realised he was still waiting for a reply.

  ‘It’s because I love her,’ she said quietly. ‘Because I love her nearly as much as I love you. And loving both of you, I couldn’t bear to think of the two of you being torn apart.’

  She took another gulp.

  ‘Worse, I couldn’t bear to think of me being the cause of you being torn apart.’

  ‘But why—?’

  Esther held up her hand to block his demand.

  ‘It could happen, Bill, and you must know that. If you and I get back together, who’s to say it won’t provoke Marcie into a custody battle? A battle you could lose.’

  The silence went on for so long, Esther found herself draining her glass. She rather hoped Bill would notice and fill it up as the evening was degenerating into something that might need a little bit of alcohol to numb the pain.

  Then he took the glass from her hand, but not to fill it up—merely to hold the hand that had held it.

  ‘Esther, we can’t go through life too timid to take the next step because we fear a thousand things that might or might not happen. Yes, Marcie could sue for custody of Chloe—but she could do that because she wakes up cranky next Tuesday, or because she decides a child would make a good fashion accessory, or for any of dozens of reasons that seem rational to her and totally bizarre to any normal person. That’s out of our control. What is in our control is our happiness, and we’ve missed out on that for far too long. Marry me again. Be my wife—that’s the prime consideration. Yes, you’ll also be Chloe’s mother and, yes, for better or for worse, Ma’s daughter-in-law, but I know you can handle both positions admirably. You haven’t given me one decent, rational, reasonable reason why you can’t marry me, and as I love you to distraction, let’s get on with it.’

  It was the longest speech she’d ever heard Bill make, and it warmed all the cold places in her heart, though how words alone had broken through her armour she wasn’t sure.

  ‘OK,’ she said, because after Bill’s long speech she needed to keep it short so they could get to the kissing part.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  JANET had insisted Esther shift to her place for the two days before the wedding.

  ‘It’s Christmas,’ she’d said, ‘and I’m used to having all the family staying, but since we’ve been isolated, the place is like a morgue. We’d love to have you.’

  ‘But it means leaving all the preparations for the wedding itself to Bill and his mother—and she’s still not well,’ Esther had protested.

  ‘Bill will manage,’ Janet had told her. ‘He has Sarah helping with the baby, the hospital canteen will do the catering, Jill’s scouring the town for flowers that have survived Hugo, taking from gardens where there’s no one home. So you can come to my place and rest up and relax.’

  ‘Do nothing?’

  Esther had sounded so horrified Janet had laughed.

  ‘It won’t hurt you,’ she’d said. ‘You haven’t stopped since you arrived in Jamestown. Besides, you want to be a beautiful bride, don’t you? And that dark-shadows-under-the-eyes look doesn’t photograph well for posterity.’

  ‘I don’t have to be a bride-bride with photographs and everything,’ Esther had told her. ‘Bill and I already did that scene.’

  ‘But it didn’t take, now, did it?’ Janet, who now knew a lot of the story, reminded her. ‘This time we’ll just have to make sure.’

  Esther had stopped protesting then, moving her small suitcase of belongings to Janet’s house, feeling excited in spite of herself, although
about a million times a day she wished she could have been with Bill, been held in his arms and reassured about his love and their future and all the other doubts that sprang up like mushrooms in her mind.

  ‘So, have you thought about what you’re going to wear?’ Janet asked, on Christmas Eve, when Esther returned from seeing the city administrator who, as a registered marriage celebrant, would perform the ceremony.

  ‘Jeans and a shirt?’ Esther said. ‘It’s really all I’ve got. I called in at the shopping centre on my way back to your place, but the clothing stores are still closed. And even if they were open, I don’t want anything fancy.’

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ Janet said. ‘But there will be photos, and being a girl, Chloe will want to look at them later, and you don’t want her thinking you didn’t think enough of her father to make an effort, now do you?’

  Esther shook her head.

  ‘Janet, I can’t think past tomorrow and you’re imagining things that might or might not happen in ten years’ time.’

  But Janet’s words stayed with her, so when Jill turned up with a suitcase later in the day, announcing that her daughter was the same size as Esther and, though she’d been evacuated, she’d assured her mother by telephone that Esther was welcome to anything in her wardrobe, Esther agreed to at least look.

  ‘She works as a public relations person for one of the big mining companies, so has to have a wardrobe that goes anywhere,’ Jill added, opening the suitcase and tipping a bright array of clothes onto a bed.

  ‘This is wonderful,’ Janet said, holding up a slim-fitting lilac satin against her matronly figure.

  ‘Not quite me,’ Esther told her, sifting through the clothes, selecting anything pale and relatively plain. Not standing out was something so ingrained in her she blanched when Jill picked up a silky-looking scrap of material in delicate shades of gold.

  ‘I thought this,’ Jill said. ‘It would be perfect with your colouring. I can just see you in it. And it’s obviously something my daughter’s never worn because it’s still got a price tag on it.’

  She passed it to Esther who looked at it and shook her head.