and although he didn’t hug him, his eyes were shining and she could see Jake was pleased that he’d got it right.
So very, very right. ‘Thomas, look at this!’ she exclaimed, unwrapping the shape sorter and giving it to him, and he picked it up and shook it and laughed happily.
‘Tull!’ he said, and Jake’s face creased in bewilderment.
‘Tull?’
‘He thinks it’s a rattle,’ Edward explained. ‘Look, Thomas, it opens, and you can put these bits in. See this one? It’s a square. Look!’
And Thomas stared, fascinated, as the little shape went into the hole as if by magic, and Jake stared, just as fascinated, it seemed, and Millie blinked away the tears and looked back under the tree. There were still two presents there, and Kitty dived under and pulled them out.
‘This is for Rufus, and this one’s for you,’ she said, handing Millie a soft, squashy parcel.
‘Me?’ she said, horribly conscious that she hadn’t bought him anything, or made him anything or in fact done anything except make his already difficult life even harder.
She swallowed and met his eyes, and he smiled tentatively. ‘Go on, open it. It’s only silly.’
‘I haven’t—’
‘Shh. Open it.’
So she did, and when she saw the fingerless mitts that could turn into proper mittens, her eyes filled. He’d listened to what she’d said about not being able to do anything with gloves on, and he’d found her a solution.
A silly, crazy pink solution, with a matching scarf that was soft and cosy and gorgeous, and her eyes flooded with tears that she could no longer hold back.
‘You’ve made Mummy cry,’ Kitty said, staring at her, and Edward looked at her worriedly, but she dredged up a smile and scrubbed her cheeks with the heels of her hands and met Jake’s eyes.
‘I’m fine, really. Thank you, Jake. Thank you for everything.’
‘My pleasure,’ he said. ‘What about the dog’s?’
‘I hope it’s not food.’
‘It’s not food. Here, open it,’ he said, handing it to her, and she knelt up beside him and tore off the paper and her eyes filled again.
‘It’s a coat!’ she said, choked. ‘Oh, thank you, he’s been miserable in the cold and he hates the rain. Oh, that’s lovely.’
And then, because she couldn’t hold back any longer, she leant over and hugged him. Not as hard as Kitty, careful of his bruises, but hard enough that he would know she really meant it.
And he hugged her back, his arms warm and hard and strong around her, and it would have been so easy to sink into them and stay there for the rest of the day.
The rest of her life.
No!
She straightened up, blinking away fresh tears and scrambling to her feet. ‘Right, let’s put all this paper in the bin and tidy up, and then we need to get dressed, and come back down and have breakfast, and then we’ve got the world’s biggest snowman to build!’
IT WAS the most magical day.
They’d all gone upstairs to wash and dress, and Jake had called her back and asked her to help him.
‘I could do with a shower, but I don’t want to get the new cast wet and I didn’t do so well yesterday. Could you tape this bag over my arm?’
‘Of course,’ she said, putting Thomas on the floor, and he handed her the bag and some tape, and then shucked off his robe so he was standing in front of her in nothing more than snug-fitting jersey boxers that sent her heart rate rocketing. Until she saw his bruises, and they took her breath away.
‘Oh, Jake—you’re black and blue!’
He smiled wryly. ‘Tell me about it. Still, I’m alive. It could have been worse. And it’s better today.’
She wasn’t convinced, but she stuck the bag on his arm and stood back, trying not to look at him and not really succeeding, because her eyes were relentlessly drawn to his taut, well-muscled chest with its scatter of dark curls, to the strong, straight legs with their spectacular muscles and equally spectacular bruises. ‘Can you manage now?’ she asked, trying to sound businesslike and obviously failing, because his right eyebrow twitched.
‘Why?’ he asked, his voice low and his eyes dancing with mischief. ‘Are you offering to wash my back?’
‘On second thoughts,’ she said and, scooping Thomas up, she left him to it and concentrated—barely—on dressing her children and making breakfast for them all before she put Thomas down for a nap and they wrapped up warmly and went out into the snow.
The snowman was huge—probably not the biggest in the world, but huge for all that—and Jake had found his old ski hat and scarf and they’d raided the fridge for a carrot—and two sprouts for his eyes, ‘because,’ Kitty said, ‘they’re too disgusting to eat.’ Edward found a twig that looked like a pipe to stick in his mouth. Then, when the snowman was finished, standing in pride of place outside the breakfast room window so he could watch them eat, they came back inside, hung their coats in the boiler room to dry, and settled down by the fire in the drawing room to watch a film while they warmed up.
She flitted between the film and the kitchen, making sure everything was set in motion at the right time like a military operation and laying the table in the breakfast room, because, as Jake said, the dining room was too formal for having fun in. Not to mention too beautiful for Thomas to hurl his dinner across the room or for Kitty to ‘accidentally’ shoot peas off the edge of her plate for the dog to find, and anyway, it was a long way from the kitchen.
So she put out the crackers and the cutlery and the jolly red and green paper napkins with reindeer on, and a big white pillar candle they’d bought in the supermarket standing on a red plate. In between doing that and checking on the meal, she sat with her family and Jake, squeezing up next to Edward, while Thomas sat wedged between him and Jake, and Kitty had found herself a little place on Jake’s lap, with his arm round her and her head on his shoulder and her thumb in her mouth. The next time she came in he had Thomas on his lap instead, standing on his leg and trying to climb over the arm of the sofa.
‘I think he’s bored,’ Jake said softly, and Thomas looked up at her and beamed and held up his arms, and she scooped him up and hugged him.
‘Hungry too, probably.’
‘Is it lunchtime yet?’ Kitty asked hopefully. ‘I’m starving!’
‘Nearly.’
‘Can I help?’
Could he? Could she cope with him in the kitchen, that strong, hard, battered body so close to hers in the confined space?
She
