A Little Christmas Magic (11 page)

That he intended to make this night unforgettable.

Not that Emma had the slightest doubt that this would be the case but she loved being given the promise. Along with her body and her heart, Adam McAllister had just won her lifelong trust.

T
HE MAGIC WAS
getting stronger.

Emma’s gift to Adam had been received so well it seemed that he wanted to unwrap it all over again the following night, and Emma was only too happy to participate, tiptoeing into Adam’s room when the children were fast asleep.

How amazing that the same gift could be given in both directions.

And that parts of it could be given to others without them knowing how or why it was happening?

They were being very careful to make sure the children didn’t realise what had changed between them but the magic was still happening.

The new connection between Adam and Emma was sending out tendrils that were touching the children. Making them all feel like a family.

Like when naughty Benji had mistaken the old teddy Poppy carried everywhere now, for a dog toy and had grabbed its leg. Poppy had tried to keep hold of it but ended up pulling off the damaged arm and she had been distraught.

‘Emma can fix it,’ Adam consoled her.

‘Daddy can fix it,’ Emma said at the same time.

They looked at each other and smiled.

‘You’re good at sewing,’ Adam said. ‘I’ve seen that pretty dress you made Poppy for the play.’

‘You’re the doctor,’ she said solemnly. ‘An amputated arm is much more in your line of work.’

‘Aye …’ Adam nodded thoughtfully but his eyes held a mischievous glint. ‘I’ll need a scrub nurse, though.’

‘I love new jobs.’ It was hard not to grin but Poppy was still sobbing.

‘We need a clean sheet,’ Adam told her, ‘so we’ve got an operating table. Ollie? Can you go and bring my doctor bag, please?’

It was a treat, turning the small disaster into a game that the children were fascinated by. With a clean sheet on the table, Adam pretended to give teddy an anaesthetic with a nebuliser. He’d found masks and gloves for both he and Emma to wear and he seemed more than happy to use up other medical supplies, like the suture kit.

It might have been a game but watching Adam draw the teddy’s furry fabric together and make the complicated-looking knots of real sutures impressed Emma as much as it did the children. Their father was doing his important,
real
work at home. For teddy.

‘Pay attention, scrub nurse,’ Adam growled at one point. ‘You have to cut the thread now.’

Emma giggled and, after a startled moment, so did both the children.

Teddy’s arm got bandaged when the operation was finished and then he got sent off to Intensive Care in Poppy’s bedroom because it was bedtime. Ollie got to carry him because he’d been promoted to orderly.

‘I’ll bet they’ll remember that for the rest of their lives,’ Emma told Adam later that night as she lay in his arms yet again. ‘The night Daddy operated on teddy.’

‘I think I’ll remember it,’ Adam replied quietly. ‘It was special.’

‘Magic,’ Emma agreed happily.

‘Aye …’ Adam bent his head to kiss her again. ‘Like you …’

The newest member of the Braeburn McAllister clan was born in the new light of the day after teddy’s surgery.

Everyone in the village assumed that was why Dr McAllister was looking so happy. He had a bonny new niece and everybody was fine and his mother would head home in a couple of weeks and life would carry on just the same but better.

‘They’ve called the wee lassie Holly—did you hear? Because she’s been born sae close to Christmas.’

If anyone wondered why that Miss Sinclair seemed to be just as happy as the rest of the family, even though she was no relation to the new bairn, they just gave each other knowing looks. She was always a happy wee thing, wasn’t she? A bit different, mind, with strange clothes and carrying her guitar with her everywhere, but you couldn’t say a word against how she looked after those twins and the way she was getting involved with the school’s Christmas production and even with the fundraising for the hall committee.

And, oh, my … she
could
sing like a wee angel, couldn’t she?

Phone calls and texts and photographs pinged between Scotland and Canada but it was a couple of days before everything came together well enough for a family gathering, courtesy of an online video chat.

Marion and Holly were back home already with Ian—the proud husband and new father—and Catherine was
using her tablet. Adam had set up his desktop computer in the living room. With a fire burning merrily in the grate and the lights on the Christmas tree twinkling, it seemed the perfect background for a digital reunion, but Catherine McAllister seemed overwhelmed by the initial visual contact.

‘Oh … is that a … a …
Christmas
tree?’

‘It’s
our
Christmas tree, Gran …’ Poppy leaned in close to the computer screen to make sure her grandmother could see her properly. ‘Emma helped us paint the balls and we sticked the sweets on the stars and we made paper chains and … and
everything
.’

Catherine probably couldn’t see anything except Poppy’s nose, Emma thought, but there was no mistaking the pride and joy the small girl was radiating. She could see the screen but she was staying out of range of the camera, sitting on the floor near the fire, flanked by Bob and Benji.

There was no mistaking the voice thickened by tears from the other end of the connection either.

‘That’s wonderful, darling. It’s the most beautiful Christmas tree I’ve ever seen. Emma’s clever, isn’t she?’

‘Aye.’ Adam gently pulled Poppy’s head back to allow a wider camera view. ‘She’s made a dress for Poppy, too. For the school play. I told you that Jemima’s going to be in the production, didn’t I?’

Laughter came from behind Catherine and the picture on the screen changed angles sharply. They got a view of polished wooden floorboards and then feet and then the picture settled on a young woman sitting in an armchair with a small bundle in her arms. She could be Adam’s twin, not just his sister, Emma thought. With that same dark hair and eyes and a smile that was so like Adam’s when he was really happy.

She’d seen that smile so often in the last few days. Everyone had and it was contagious. There was so much laughter in this house now and even people in the village seemed to be smiling more.

‘Are you trying to upstage me, Adam? Creating havoc in the village so nobody’s got time to talk about my wee Holly? Whose crazy idea was it to take our donkey into the hall?’

‘
Emma’s
,’ the twins chorused.

Oliver pushed past Poppy to take centre stage. ‘Aunty Marion—can you come and see our play? I’m going to be Joseph and I get to lead Jemima until we get to the stage and I’ve got a … a rib that Emma made out of a sheet—’

‘Robe,’ Adam supplied.

‘And I wear a stripy tea towel on my head and Emma’s made a special rope thing to hold it on and …’

And Marion was laughing again. ‘I can’t come this time, pet. I have to be here to look after wee Holly. But
next
year we’ll all be back in Braeburn and we’ll all come and see the play.’

‘But Jemima won’t be in it next year.’

And I won’t be here, Emma thought. She had to dip her head and swallow hard.

‘I think I need to meet this Emma,’ Marion declared. ‘Where is she?’

‘She’s here.’ Adam turned away from the computer and held out his hand. ‘Come over, Emma. Come and meet my sister and our new niece.’

She couldn’t not respond to that outstretched hand. To the invitation in those eyes and the smile she was coming to love more and more. With the children standing in front of them, nobody would notice that Adam caught her hand when she got close enough, would they? Or that
he laced his fingers through hers and kept holding it as Emma smiled at the screen.

‘Hi, Marion. Congratulations. I’ve seen the pictures of Holly and she’s just gorgeous.’

Adam squeezed her hand and it was automatic to look up and return his smile. Hard to look away quickly enough to avoid making it obvious that her relationship with her employer had undergone a radical change recently.

Marion looked away from the screen for a moment, her face a question mark. Was she exchanging a significant look with her mother? But then she was smiling again, possibly even more widely than before.

‘I hear you can sing,’ she said. ‘That you—and the children of Braeburn school—are about to become rich and famous.’

Emma laughed. ‘I don’t think so. But a local radio station got hold of the story about us making a CD of Christmas carols as a fundraiser. They’ve organised a bus to take us all into a recording studio and they’re going to make it available as a download so lots of people can buy it. With a bit of luck, we’ll be able to fix up the hall
and
get a new piano for the school.’

The twins were feeling left out.

‘I’ve got a train, Aunty Marion. It’s on the floor by the tree, see?’

‘No, I can’t see it, pet.’

‘I’ll get the engine and
show
you.’ Oliver wriggled between Adam and Emma and they had to break their handhold.

‘And I’ve got a bear.’ Poppy held it up and pressed it against the computer screen. ‘Benji pulled him and the arm felled off but Daddy and Emma poperated it and it’s all better now.’

‘Good heavens … that’s
my
old bear,’ came Catherine’s voice.

‘We found it in the attic when we went up to hunt out the Christmas decorations,’ Adam explained. ‘You don’t mind, do you? Ollie’s train was the one I had when I was his age. I’d forgotten it was even there.’

‘Of course I don’t mind.’ Catherine’s eyes were suspiciously bright. ‘It’s wonderful that you found things to use again. Oh … I wish I was there with you. You all look
so
happy.’

If they hadn’t noticed anything significant in the glance Adam and Emma had exchanged before, they would surely pick up on something this time as Adam turned to Emma and smiled.

‘We are,’ he said.

‘But what on earth did you do to the bear to fix it?’

‘A poperation,’ Poppy shouted. ‘I
told
you.’

‘An
operation
.’ Emma was laughing. ‘Daddy got a special needle and thread from his doctor’s bag and sewed teddy’s arm back on.’

‘I growled at Benji,’ Poppy added. ‘And he looked sad.’

‘Is Benji going to be in the play, too?’ Marion asked.

‘‘Course not.’ Oliver was back with the train engine. ‘He’s a
dog.
’

‘Maybe he could pretend to be a sheep?’

‘No.’ Adam shook his head. ‘Don’t go putting ideas in their heads, Miri. You’re as bad as Emma. We’ve got more than enough going on right now. I’m helping to shift hay bales into the hall tomorrow. Bryan from the pub is making a manger.’

The connection crackled and the picture pixelated for a moment. By the time it cleared, baby Holly was crying and it was hard to hear conversation.

‘We’d better go,’ Adam said. ‘It’s very late for you.
We’ll try again on Christmas Day, aye? Children—come and blow a kiss to your wee cousin.’

With a chorus of ‘Miss you’ and ‘Love you lots’ the call ended. For a moment the blankness of the screen seemed to dampen the atmosphere in the room.

Emma groaned. ‘Oh, no … we forgot to sing the carol for the baby.’

The twins were good at speaking in unison. ‘Deck the halls with boughs of
holly
…’

They were also good at looking equally disappointed.

‘Never mind. We needed to practise a bit more anyway. We’ll be extra-good at it for Christmas Day.’

But Poppy’s lip wobbled and Oliver hugged the train engine more tightly.

‘It’s almost bedtime but why don’t we have a quick practice now? Maybe Daddy could record it on his phone and we could
send
it to Gran and Aunty Marion.’

‘I’ll get your kit-ar,’ Poppy offered.

‘No.’ Oliver glared at her. ‘That’s
my
job.’

Happiness had been restored yet again, thanks to Emma’s way of dealing with problems.

No. Maybe it was being created rather than restored.

That was certainly the case for Adam, he realised much later that night as he held Emma in his arms yet again.

She was asleep but he pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head and the pressure seemed to bounce back in a shaft that went straight to his chest, where it encased his heart and squeezed it tightly.

Was this what happiness felt like?

But this was something he’d never felt before and he knew there had been times he’d been happy. His childhood had been a happy one. He’d been secure and loved
and he’d had friends and he’d loved school and his music lessons. It had been Old Jock who’d taught him to play the bagpipes and he’d been so proud that Christmastime when his pupil had been chosen to be the lone piper for the school production. He’d never said anything to Adam in the years since he’d stopped playing but he knew how happy the old man would be if he confessed that he was ready to pick up his pipes again.

Thank goodness Emma had been there and had known what to do the other day. Jock had been very lucky. He might have still survived his cardiac arrest but it had to be thanks to good-quality CPR that he’d come through without any neurological damage.

Gratitude added another layer to Adam’s sense of wellbeing and his breath came out in a soft sigh.

It wasn’t just Jock who was lucky that Emma had come to Braeburn.

His children were as happy as he’d ever seen them. Maybe it was partly due to the festive decorations that seemed to be creeping into every corner of the house. Today’s addition had been big tartan bows at intervals all the way up the bannisters on the stairs. Or maybe it wasn’t the decorations so much as his giving permission to
have
them?

Had he shut happiness out of the house without intending to? Had it just become a habit because he’d lived with his grief and his guilt for so long?

That he was letting go was thanks to Emma, too. She’d come here with her music and songs and … and her sheer
joie de vivre
and she’d given them all something that could never have been wrapped and put under a Christmas tree.

What was it that was creating this feeling that was almost euphoria?

Part of it was the kind of excitement he remembered from when he’d been a child. On Christmas morning when he would tiptoe downstairs before anyone else was awake to see if the magic had happened and there were mysterious, brightly wrapped parcels under the tree.