tell me—you’re allergic to red suits and big white beards?’
If she’d been pushy or snippy or sarcastic, it would’ve been easy to resist. To push back. But this, the jokiness underlain by a sweetness—this was much harder to resist.
He was going to have to tell her the truth.
‘I really don’t like Christmas,’ he said, and waited for her to start probing.
To his surprise, she didn’t.
‘A lot of people find Christmas hard,’ she said. ‘And it’s really rough on our patients and their parents. The patients who are old enough to want to be home with their families and are still young enough to believe in Father Christmas all want to know if that’s what he’ll give them: the chance to go home for Christmas. I hate telling them he can’t do that. The ones who are too old to believe in Father Christmas—for them it’s seeing their families and knowing how much it hurts them to be apart at Christmas, especially when they’re trying to juggle family celebrations with hospital visits and kind of splitting themselves in two. Christmas can be horrible.’
The way she said it made him realise how she felt. ‘But you don’t think it is?’
‘No. I love Christmas,’ she said. ‘I love the way it breaks down barriers and makes people kinder to each other, if only for a few hours. And I love the look of wonder in our younger patients’ faces when Father Christmas strides onto the ward, saying, “Ho-ho-ho,” and hands them a special gift from the Friends of the Hospital. It’s nothing hugely expensive, usually a book or some art stuff or a teddy bear, but enough to show them that Christmas in hospital isn’t completely bad. I bring my guitar in and we sing a few Christmassy songs; being part of that is just amazing. Despite all the worry and the fear, there’s still hope and love.’
Hope and love. Things he’d lost a long time ago.
‘I’m sorry for being pushy. I completely understand that you’d rather not be Father Christmas.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘It’s really starting to look as if it’s going to be Mother Christmas this year.’
He suddenly realised what she was getting at. ‘You’re going to dress up in the Santa suit?’
‘I haven’t been able to talk anyone else into it,’ she said, ‘so it’s either no Father Christmas at all, or me. I guess at least I’m tall enough to get away with it.’ She spread her hands and grinned. ‘I might be able to borrow a voice-changer from my nephew or someone and hide it behind the beard. That, or I’m going to be channelling a Shakespearean actor and learning how to do a deep, booming voice.’
Anna Maskell was tall, yes, but there was nothing remotely masculine about her. She wouldn’t convince anyone that she was Father Christmas.
Jamie knew he should be nice and offer to help. But he just couldn’t get the words out.
Why did Jamie Thurston dislike Christmas so much? Anna wondered.
Maybe he’d had a difficult childhood, one where his family had rowed all the time and Christmas just made things worse—people being forced together for longer periods of time than they could stand each other. The Emergency Department was testament to how bad Christmas tensions could get. Add alcohol to the mix, and it was often explosive and painful.
But it would be rude and intrusive to ask.
She switched the conversation to something lighter. ‘There’s a team football thing in the park next weekend. Partners and children included, if you’d all like to come along.’
‘No children and no partner,’ he said, and the bleakness in his eyes shocked her.
Maybe he was divorced, and his former partner had moved away so he never got to see the children. In which case it was no wonder that he didn’t like Christmas. The festive season was a time for children, and not being able to see your kids at Christmas must be like rubbing salt into a very raw wound.
‘Sorry. I wasn’t trying to pry. Or to come on to you,’ she added, realising that he might have taken her words the wrong way.
And she really wasn’t trying to come on to him. Yes, Jamie Thurston was gorgeous; he reminded her of the actor in one of her favourite historical dramas, all dark and brooding and with those amazing cornflower-blue eyes. But she wasn’t risking her heart again. Johnny had made it very clear that nobody would want to tie themselves down to her, not once they knew the truth about her. She was pretty sure he’d said it to make himself feel better; the man she’d fallen in love with had been one of the good guys, but the shock of learning that they couldn’t have a family without a lot of medical intervention had changed him. It had made him look elsewhere; and then the guilt of knowing how badly he’d treated Anna had pushed him into saying unforgivable things that had hurt her even more than his betrayal.
‘I’m just not very good at social things,’ Jamie said.
‘Though the football isn’t a Christmassy thing.’ She winced even as the words spilled out of her mouth. Oh, for pity’s sake. The poor man had made it quite clear that he didn’t want to do the team thing next week. Why didn’t she take the hint and just get off his case?
Thankfully then their session on the bowling lanes started again, and she had to concentrate on trying to make the ball go straight. Not that she managed it. And this time she only knocked down one pin from each end. How pathetic was that?
Jamie said to her, ‘It’s your follow-through.’
‘Follow-through?’ she asked, mystified.
‘Where your hand points, that’s where the ball ends up.’
She laughed wryly. ‘Straight in the gutter, if I didn’t have the bumper bars up. But I guess my zig-zag approach is a bit too haphazard.’
‘Keep your arm straight and let the ball go when your hand’s pointing to the middle of the pins,’ he said. ‘Watch me.’
She did. ‘Wow. You got a strike.’
‘Because I aimed for the middle.’
‘I aim for the middle,’ she protested.
‘But you let the ball go too late,’ he said. ‘I take it you don’t go ten-pin bowling with your partner?’
Johnny hadn’t really been into ten-pin bowling. ‘No partner,’ she said.
He winced. ‘That wasn’t a come-on.’
‘I know.’ She smiled at him. ‘You sounded like someone who wants to help. A friend. And I appreciate that.’
He stilled, and she wondered if she’d gone too far.
But then he smiled. The kind of smile that lit up the whole room, and it transformed him utterly. It was as if he’d stepped out of the shadows he seemed to keep round him. When he smiled, Jamie Maskell was breathtakingly handsome.
‘I’ll help you with the next frame,’ he said.
‘Whatever you do,
