Emilie's Christmas Love (3 page)

Sometimes she felt as though she'd never been young. That she'd never had the experience of being carefree. It was as though she'd been born to look after other people. First her reckless, irresponsible parents, and then her strange aunt. She told herself that she liked it that way. That no one needed to look after her. She'd been born responsible.

Maybe Alain was right, she considered as she undressed slowly and started to run her bath water. Maybe she hadn't lived her own life. Maybe taking on the responsibility of a child was compounding the fault.

And maybe
, she yawned,
you’re just tired and disappointed.
She knew that things would look better tomorrow and she'd be calling Alain about the next adoption attempt.

She looked at herself in the full-length mirror, seeing the brown hair that seemed to have a life of its own, never staying in place despite her best efforts. She saw the green eyes and the dimpled chin she'd inherited from her father. Her slender body led to the ravaged leg, slightly twisted and a little thinner and shorter than the other.

Her mother had always encouraged her to act as though it didn't exist. She was a Ferrier. She should have been proud, no matter what. Wear short skirts, dance despite any awkwardness or fear of falling. Climb mountains. Water ski.

She looked at her face and found her lips trembling.

She was a Ferrier. But she couldn't pretend she wasn't a cripple. She had never worn a bathing suit. She had never danced. She wore her skirts to her mid calf or lower or she wore baggy pants.

She tried to keep her head up and she tried not to notice when people whispered as she limped past them. That was as impossible as believing she would ever climb a mountain.

Being a mother was different. She knew that she could be a good mother, despite the fact that nature had chosen to not to allow her body to give birth. She knew that she had so much love to give to another tiny human life. If only . . .

She climbed into the tub and admonished herself to stop feeling sorry for Emilie Ferrier. She lived in a nice, big house. She had plenty of money. She had a wonderful job that she loved. She was a Ferrier.

If that house was empty and lonely sometimes, and the money and the name kept her isolated from the rest of the town, well, no one ever said that life was perfect.

"Pouting again?" Joda was like a shadow, there beside her before Emilie had seen her.

The old woman sat easily in the chair beside the tub,
tsking
over the wet clothes on the tiled bathroom floor.

"What is it this time, child?"

Joda Ferrier was the last of three siblings. One had died at birth, the other, Emilie's father, ten years before that night. They were a proud, if not hardy, line.

Emilie soaped a sponge and ran it across her neck and shoulders. It wasn't unusual for Joda to visit her in the tub. Or late at night while she was sleeping. Or any other place that was unexpected. Her aunt lived for the unexpected.

"It was a little cold for the rites of the full moon, wasn't it?" Emilie asked her aunt.

Joda shrugged then took the sponge from her niece and soaped her back and shoulders. "The rites must be maintained. The temperature doesn't matter."

Emilie smiled at her aunt, looking at the snowflakes still trapped in the long white strands of her hair. Her green eyes burned fiercely in a timeless face.

No one knew exactly how old Joda was. Her father had told her that she had refused to celebrate birthdays, even as a small child.

"You didn't bring a child home with you," Joda said bluntly. "You must be going about it the wrong way."

Emilie sighed. "The little girl's guardian wants two parents."

"Easy enough," Joda answered practically. "Get married. That lawyer of yours has eyes for you."

"I'm only part of the Ferrier money to Alain," she explained to her aunt. "I wanted—"

"Didn't you want more that other time?" Joda pressed. "Look what a fiasco that was! The child is what's important here, Emilie! The family must continue, even if it's with blood other than our own!"

Emilie looked down at the rapidly cooling water in the tub. "What about love? Don't I have the right to be in love, being a precious Ferrier or not?"

Joda looked into her niece's eyes, so like her own, and shook her head. "Only you know the answer to that,
ma petite belle
. Love is one of the great mysteries. It comes when we least expect it."

She turned away to leave her niece to her bath, her flowing blue and green robe spreading out around her like a peacock's tail.

"Have you ever loved someone, Aunt Joda?" Emilie asked.

"Once," Joda replied quietly. "He died fighting in a war that wasn't his own. We were never together, but we have never been apart."

Emilie caught her breath at the pain in her aunt's honeyed voice. "I'm sorry, Aunt Joda. I love you."

"I know, child. Get out of that water and get into bed. You look as though a good breeze would knock you down."

Emilie finished her bath when her aunt had closed the door behind her then she poured herself a large glass of peach brandy that had been bottled while her father had still been alive. She climbed into her oversized canopy bed hung with white lace and turned off the light.

#

The next day, Emilie got up late and dressed hurriedly in warm clothing. The storm had cleared, but the temperatures had plunged during the night.

She looked for her aunt. There was no sign of her. The mansion had eighteen bedrooms, though, and she didn't have time to check them all. She was probably asleep somewhere in the house. She’d be awake by the time Emilie returned home that afternoon.

That was the way their relationship worked. Joda did what she pleased and Emilie knew she was all right because no one called and told her that they'd found her body on the road.

Her own parents hadn't been much different. From the time she could remember, they were always flying here and there. They’d climbed Mount Everest—her father losing two toes and her mother's nose frostbitten for the rest of her life. They’d raced cars and horses. They’d treated their daughter as if she were a doll with the occasional pat on the head and the comment on the way that she was dressed.

They’d died when Emilie was eighteen, just out of high school. Their latest passion, racing planes, had gone terribly wrong and they’d crashed into a mountainside.

Long before that, Emilie had taken over the day-to-day running of the big house and the extensive grounds. She’d made sure that her parents had food to eat and replaced her father's socks when they were worn. She’d purchased their plane tickets to Spain and kept them up to date with the family's charities.

John and Regina Ferrier were both beautiful, charming people with swarms of friends. Emilie arranged lavish parties at the mansion, sometimes doing the catering for the hundred or so guests herself.

The mansion had been a different place without their laughter and energy. Even when they’d been gone on some wild excursion and she was planning for their return, it had been exciting. Her world had become very quiet without them.

Not being like her parents, Emilie had chosen a much different life. She'd gone on to college and started teaching school as soon as she'd finished.

Joda had been outraged at a Ferrier lowering herself to teach school. Emilie wouldn't be dissuaded. She loved working with children, even the difficult ones. It gave her a purpose, a reason to get up in the morning.

Emilie ate toast and coffee for breakfast, as she always did. She went down to the garage and started her father’s old BMW. It purred to life, even though she rarely drove it, or the other three cars there. She liked the Mercedes.

She thought about Nick, and the maintenance he did on her cars to keep them running. She didn’t like the idea that she had ignored something that was done for her. It was one thing to pay someone, and another to appreciate that person. Emilie had always tried to do both.

Or at least, she thought she had.

Joda said the people in town hated them because they were Ferriers. Emilie wondered if it was more because she and her aunt kept to themselves. They were strangers in the town named for their family.

Maybe she needed to get out more. There were probably many other new people she’d never met. Perhaps none
so
interesting . . .

It had been the night and the disappointment, she reminded herself. She’d never been attracted to someone so quickly before.

She pulled out of the huge garage that had been built to hold ten cars. She'd sold the other cars that her parents had left behind. She’d kept the Mercedes, the BMW and the Bentley. She’d also kept her father's red Lamborghini. It had been his particular favorite. She never planned to drive it, but didn’t want to part with the memory of seeing him behind the wheel.

Sometimes, she thought, pulling down the long drive, glancing up at the red brick mansion silhouetted against the white hills, she felt that she should sell everything. The house was too big for two women. The stables had been empty for years. There was a cottage for the gardener and a cottage for the housekeeper that hadn't been used since she was a child. The estate covered most of the mountaintop, looking down at the lights from the town and the highway that snaked around it.

She'd kept it all because she had wonderful memories of growing up there and had always thought her children would love to run through the apple orchard and play in the waterfall that rushed down the side of the mountain into the stream that meandered through the grounds.

Joda was another obstacle to selling. Emilie knew she could never move the older woman to a condominium. She had been born and raised there, running wild with the moon, and she wanted to die there.

Until then, Emilie sighed, she would have to rattle around in the big house that her great- grandfather had built. She hoped the time would come that she’d find a child to share her life.

It was Wednesday morning, but the week had just begun for the children. Monday and Tuesday had been teacher's workdays. The teachers were ready for the middle of the week. The kids were wild after their long weekend.

Emilie walked down the crowded hallway to her fourth grade room, shivering in the cold. The furnace wasn't working yet that morning and her breath was frosty on the air. She kept her coat on while she hung up some new papers and drawings that she considered original. She used the time to mentally prepare for the onslaught of class when the first bell rang.

Emilie taught an exceptional class because she wanted to work with children who were having a difficult time. The principal and the school obliged her by dumping all of the problem children into her classroom. Most thrived under her guidance. A few she could never sort out.

She'd inherited Adam Markland in the middle of the year from a distraught teacher who 'couldn't do a thing with him'. Unfortunately, it appeared that Emilie would have the same fate. She'd had him for a month and the boy wasn't interested in any of her programs. He was rude and disruptive, well on his way to being a candidate for the young offender’s list.

Twenty minutes after class started, he dragged his feet into the classroom with the principal behind him, beckoning her into the hallway.

"Adam was having some problems with the snow this morning," Mr. Howard explained briefly, his troubled brow furrowed, as always. "He seemed intent on making Jonnie Blair eat all of it."

Emilie hid a small smile. Jonnie Blair was one of the biggest bullies in the school. He was a large, aggressive boy who managed to get good grades and suck up to the teachers while scaring the smaller children around him. It was difficult to imagine the much smaller, almost frail, Adam Markland making the other boy do anything.

"I've called in his uncle, the boy's legal guardian, for a conference this afternoon. I'd like you to be there."

"Of course," she murmured then went back into her classroom.

Everyone else in the class was busy doing the assignment she'd given out, except Adam whose tousled blond head lifted as she entered the room. He stared at her defiantly.

"We're doing Math," she told him. "Page 101."

"I don't have my book," he answered.

"I have one you can use." She took out a pencil and some paper before that could be the next issue.

She set everything on his desk and he stared at it without making a move to use any of it.

Emilie hadn't realized that his parents didn't have custody of the boy. She couldn't help but wonder what kind of man the uncle was who was trying to raise Adam. His family life could have a great deal to do with the boy's attitude.

Adam sat and looked out of the window most of the day. Emilie refrained from doing anything else until she talked with the boy's uncle that afternoon. Maybe with a better understanding of his home life, she could find some way to get Adam to include himself in the classroom activities.

The bell rang for dismissal and Emilie had Adam wait for the meeting.

"Were you really trying to make Jonnie eat snow?" she asked when they were alone.

Adam looked at her, his dark eyes fierce on her face. "He wouldn't leave me alone."

Emilie frowned. "I know he's a bully, but he's so much bigger than you."

Adam grinned, showing a place where two teeth were missing. "I don't care how big he is. He's a puppy."

"Adam, why won't you do your schoolwork? I know you're smart. If you can take on Jonnie, you can do this work."

"It's not the same."

"It is if you want it to be. If you think about your schoolwork as being a fight to be better, to grow up and have a good job, maybe you could battle your way through it."

"I don't need to go to school to have a job. My uncle owns his own business. I can work for him."

"I don't think he owns a business where you don't have to read or write or use math," she argued. "What does he do?"

"Ms. Ferrier." Mr. Howard nodded to her from the doorway. "Mr. Garrett, this is Ms. Emilie Ferrier. She's taken over as Adam's teacher for the second quarter of the year. Ms. Ferrier, this is Nick Garrett, Adam's uncle."