toys at his feet. Gold and silver snowflakes hung from the veranda ceiling, alternating with green and red stars. Tinsel in every colour twined around the veranda posts.
She flinched. Christmas. Oh, she’d known she wouldn’t be able to avoid it completely—Cade had two young daughters after all—but …
She’d thought that out here in the Never-Never it’d be small-scale, low-key … restrained.
It hit her then that she’d been counting on it. Her chest cramped.
The car stopped at the edge of a path lined with oversized candy canes that she knew would light up at night. At the end of the path four broad steps led to the veranda and the front door of the homestead. It was a testament to the door’s solidity that it didn’t buckle beneath the weight of its enormous wreath. Three wooden angels graced the roof of the veranda, their trumpets raised heavenward as if heralding the arrival of the silly season.
She bit her tongue to stop from blurting out something unpoised and stupid. Her hands fisted and she blinked hard to counter the stinging in her eyes. All this Christmas-ness was a too-vivid reminder of the merriment and festivity she’d known herself incapable of taking part in back home. It reminded her of the wedding she should’ve been planning. It taunted her with all she’d lost and how nothing—nothing—could ever replace it.
It was only the first week of December. She’d taken a month’s leave from her job as a teacher and her four weeks of Christmas holidays, because Christmas and wedding preparations had become synonymous in her mind. But Christmas with all its gaudy festivity now stared her in the face. The joke was on her. She swallowed and tried to ignore the ache that spread through her chest.
‘Now I’ll warrant this isn’t what you were expecting.’
Beside her, Cade chuckled. She couldn’t open her mouth to either agree or disagree.
‘What do you think?’
She hated it! The truth, though, would not endear her to him. Of that she was certain. And while she told herself she didn’t give two hoots what her employer thought of her—other than that she did her job well—deliberate rudeness was not in her nature. Nor was it poised, elegant or dignified. She tried to think of something coolly elegant to say … or even something bland and inoffensive.
She turned to Cade, she racked her brain and then realised she needn’t have bothered. One glance at his face told her he’d perceived her true feelings on the matter. His eyes narrowed and while there was no denying that he was broad, big and strong, for the first time he looked formidable too.
She swallowed. She couldn’t find a smile, but she struggled for light. ‘To think I’d left all this behind in the city.’
His lips tightened. ‘So that’s what you’re running from.’
‘I’m not running from anything.’ Taking a timeout wasn’t running.
He leaned back, but his eyes remained flint hard. Blue flint in a landscape of khaki and brown. The pulse in her throat swelled and pounded. ‘That generator I just unloaded, it’s to run all the coloured fairy lights I’m planning on hanging from the house and around the garden in the next week or two.’
The homestead would look like some tacky fairy tale palace. She sucked in a breath. Or an overdecorated wedding cake.
‘We’re doing Christmas big out here this year, Ms McGillroy. If that’s going to be a problem for you then it’s not too late for me to radio Jerry to come back and fly you out of here.’
So she could face all this insubstantial, bubble-popping, fake merriment in Melbourne? No, thank you very much! She could put on a happy face and do Christmas. The people at Waminda Downs didn’t know her. They wouldn’t murmur, There, there, the holiday season can be tough sometimes, can’t it? She might not be through with gritting her teeth yet, but she was absolutely positively done with pity.
‘I thought we’d agreed on first names, Cade.’
Very slowly, the tension eased out of him.
She turned back to stare at all the over-the-top Christmasness. ‘My mother would find all this the height of tackiness.’
There was no denying that thought cheered her up.
‘You repeat that to Ella and Holly and I’ll throttle you.’
The words came out on a lazy breath but she didn’t doubt their veracity. She stared down her nose at him. ‘I’m the nanny, not the evil witch.’
‘Just make sure you stay in character.’
She frowned and turned more fully to face him. ‘You don’t exactly strike me as the Santa Claus type yourself, you know?’ And he didn’t. Competent, calm in a crisis, perceptive, she’d peg him as all those things, but joyful and jocund? She shook her head.
‘Just goes to show what you know, then.’
But he shifted on his seat and she remembered he was a father—a single father—and his first priority was making sure his daughters were looked after and happy. ‘I would never ruin the magic of Christmas for any child,’ she assured him.
He surveyed her again and then nodded. ‘Glad that’s settled.’
He still didn’t strike her as Father Christmas material, but there was no questioning his devotion to his daughters. It warmed something inside her that she didn’t want warmed. It made her draw back inside herself. ‘When can I meet Ella and Holly?’
He eyed her thoughtfully, but eventually nodded in the direction of her car window. ‘Right about now, I’d say.’
Nicola turned … and fell in love.
Four-year-old Ella and eighteen-month-old Holly wore the biggest smiles and had the most mischievous faces Nicola had ever seen, and they were dancing down the front steps of the homestead and along the path towards her in matching red and green frocks.
Good Lord! She gulped. She hadn’t factored this in when she’d plotted to keep her distance and maintain her reserve as she implemented her self-improvement scheme.
She pushed out of the car, a smile spreading through her. Children, she made an amendment to her earlier plan, didn’t count. Children didn’t lie and cheat. Children didn’t pretend to be your friend and then steal your fiancé.
She didn’t need to guard her heart around children.
Cade watched Nicola greet Ella and Holly and win them over in two seconds flat.
It wasn’t a difficult feat. He refused to give their perplexing nanny any credit for that. Despite all they’d been through, Ella and Holly were remarkably trusting. They’d have shown as much delight if he’d presented Jerry, the pilot, as their nanny.
But as he watched them, especially Ella, delight in Nicola’s undeniably female presence, his heart started to burn. It should be their mother here. Not a nanny. And no amount of Christmas cheer could ever make that up to his children.
His hands clenched. It wasn’t going to stop him from giving them the best Christmas possible, though.
He
