Santa's Secret (4 page)

He just smiled and asked, “So where do you
live in England?”

They passed the next half an hour talking
about practical matters, about houses and cities, where they’d travelled and
people and places they’d seen. Eva ordered an ice cream sundae for Oscar,
knowing he wouldn’t eat it all but also knowing he’d love the chocolate sauce
between the layers, and she was pleased when Isabel fought against her natural
instincts to order the fruit salad and also chose the sundae.

Rudi didn’t mention Damon or what she’d
said about her marriage again. As they finished their meals and left the
restaurant, walking back slowly along the snowy path to their cabins, Eva shot
him a grateful look.

“Thank you,” she said, holding out a gloved
hand to catch snowflakes, “for being so polite and not saying what a terrible
wife I am.”

He chuckled. “You are very welcome. And I
think you are so not terrible, really. I think there is probably more to the
story than meets the eye.”

She buried her chin in her scarf. He was
quite astute.

Ahead of them, the lanterns in front of
their cabins lit the snow with golden circles. Isabel tried to get Oscar to
walk nicely beside her, but he kept running ahead to scoop up snow in tiny
handfuls. Crushing one lot into a ball, he threw it at her. He was usually
terrible at throwing, but this time his aim went true and it struck her in the
middle of her chest.

Isabel stood there, looking aghast, and
Eva’s hand rose to cover her mouth. “Oh dear.”

To her delight, however, Isabel’s face lit
up, and she bent to scoop up some snow herself, forming it into a ball that she
then threw at the boy.

“Gently, Izzy,” Rudi called, but he needn’t
have worried; the girl was thoughtful enough to be considerate of Oscar’s age
and made sure she threw it softly enough so it scattered lightly down his coat.

They watched the two children running
around outside the cabins and paused beneath the lantern to let them have a few
minutes of fun.

Eva stuffed her hands in her pockets,
watching her breath frost before her face. She looked up at the sky, seeing the
stars decorating the black velvet like glitter. “No lights?” she said,
disappointed.

“The
aurora borealis
?” Rudi looked
up too. “I am sure we will see it before Christmas. Sometimes the colours are
quite breath-taking.”

Eva nodded, captivated anyway by the amount
of stars, the sky seemingly untouched by light pollution. “Beautiful,” she
murmured.

“Yes,” he said softly.

She lowered her head, startled to see his
gaze on her, not on the sky. He was only a foot away, and once again—as it had
earlier—time seemed to slow, and the whole world consisted of just the two of
them.

Rudi towered over her, tall, broad, and as
masculine as any Viking she could imagine had existed in real life. Snow lay
thickly on his hair and shoulders, but he didn’t seem to feel the cold. His
gaze rested on hers, and she wasn’t surprised to see it lit with the same
flames of desire that she knew must be flickering in her own eyes.

His lips parted, and for a moment Eva
thought he was going to kiss her. Her heart pounded, her own lips parting in
response as her breath quickened. How long had it been since she had kissed a
man? At least eighteen months. And in fact more than that, as Damon had gone
away frequently towards the end before he died.

If Rudi leaned towards her, what should she
do? Lean forwards too? Kiss him back? What if Oscar and Isabel saw them? Jeez,
she’d just met the guy. Would she look easy? But it would only be a kiss!
Talk
about getting carried away, Eva.

Something of what she was thinking must
have shown in her eyes, because Rudi blinked, breaking the spell as it had
before, and they both moved back a little. Disappointment swept through her,
with an equal measure of relief. She couldn’t kiss a stranger in front of her
son, out there in the middle of the road. What was she thinking?

A snowball landed squarely on Rudi’s
shoulder, thrown by the inimitable Oscar, who squealed with laughter. Rudi
caught him and swung him upside down, and the boy screamed with pleasure.

Eva chuckled. “Okay you, time to go in, and
then it’s bath and bed.”

“I don’t want to go to bed!”

She ignored him and smiled at Rudi as he
lowered the boy to the ground. “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

“Thank
you
for letting us join you.
It was very kind and I had a nice time.” His eyes showed regret. Was he wishing
he’d kissed her after all?

She nodded, fighting against her own regret
that threatened to rise. “Perhaps we’ll see you around tomorrow?”

“Of course. It is a small place, after
all.”

They smiled at each other, and then Eva
walked away, Oscar wet mitten in hers.

The following day, Rudi got up, showered,
dressed, then sat at his computer just as Isabel rolled over in the sofabed and
rubbed her eyes.

“Morning, Daddy,” she said.

“Good morning.” He smiled. She had undone
her braids and her hair now lay spilled out on the pillow around her, a mass of
golden waves like a wheat field in summer. She looked like a Scandinavian
goddess, Freyja maybe, or a princess, he thought—Eva was right.

Isabel sat up and stretched, then pushed
herself out of bed, shoved her feet into the slippers and padded over to him.
To his surprise, she climbed onto his lap and put her arms around him.

“Hey,
rakas.
What is the matter?”

“I had a bad dream.”

“What was it about?”

She refused to tell him, but seemed happy
to snuggle up to him, comforted by his presence, so he sat back in the seat and
put his arms around her, resting his lips on the top of her head. There was
nothing to her; he could feel the bones of her ribs through her nightdress, and
she weighed hardly anything.

A rush of love ran through him, and he
tightened his arms around her. She was not a daddy’s girl and had never been
overly demonstrative, so this sudden display of affection caught him unawares.
How long had it been since someone—anyone—had put their arms around him like
this? He had been starved for physical contact for so long that he had trained
himself to think he didn’t need it. Frieda gave him a kiss on the cheek when
she saw him, but apart from that he hadn’t had a decent hug for an eternity.

In the cabin next to his, the front door
banged and through the curtains he saw Eva walk down the path to the village,
Oscar running beside her. He blew out a long, slow breath. The night before he
had come very, very close to kissing her. That showed how starved for affection
he was. He’d only just met the poor woman. She’d lost her husband and come to
Rovaniemi to escape—the last thing she would have wanted was some strange guy
taking advantage of her.

And yet…she’d looked up at him with those
dark brown eyes, and her lips had parted, and she’d looked very much like she
wanted to be kissed. He remembered what she’d said in the restaurant
, I
don’t miss him as much as I should
. The admission had upset her, and her
eyes had glassed over, with tears not far from the surface. Rudi had changed
the subject, even though he’d wanted to ask her more. He had felt the guilt
rolling off her in waves, and he could understand why—what an admission to make
to a complete stranger! And yet, he thought he understood.

In a way, it was the same with him and
Vanessa. When they were first together, he’d thought he would be consumed by
jealousy and would kill any man who touched her, but by the time he found out
about her affair, the only emotion he could summon was a vague sense of relief
that he finally had an excuse to divorce her—that he didn’t have to make
something up. Everyone, including Frieda, had treated him with kid gloves for
months as if worried he was going to break down or something, but although he’d
thrown himself into work and retreated socially, the overriding feeling had
only been satisfaction that she wasn’t his responsibility anymore. He was still
supporting her financially, which irked him considering she’d never contributed
much to their marriage, but he had enough in the coffers to go around and
ultimately he was just glad she’d gone.

So maybe he could understand why Eva wasn’t
devastated. Maybe her marriage had already broken down before her husband died.
Whatever the reason, Rudi didn’t think it was simple callousness that had
prompted her to make the statement. She hadn’t seemed like a callous person,
even though he’d only known her for a matter of hours.

He’d planned to spend an hour or two that
morning going through his emails and doing a bit of work, but with Isabel’s
arms tight around his neck and the thought of Eva in his head, suddenly he
wanted to do something different.

“Hey,” he murmured, rubbing his daughter’s
back. “How about we have a quick bit of breakfast then go into the village
together?”

She lifted her head and nodded. Her eyes
looked a little watery, and he felt a surge of guilty that she seemed so
unhappy.

He kissed her forehead. “We shall have a
lovely day,
rakas,
eh? Lots of fun at Santa’s Secret Village. Now, go
and get dressed and I will make us some toast.”

*

Within half an hour, the two of them had
wrapped up in thick coats, gloves, hats and scarves and they made their way
towards the village. It had been snowing all night, by the looks of it, and
their footsteps of the evening before had disappeared, leaving the pavement a
carpet of untouched white beauty.

“Where would you like to go?” he asked. “We
could visit Santa’s Playground.” Apparently the theme park brought in the most
money in the complex, so he was keen to cast his eye over it. “Or maybe go for
a reindeer ride.” Every child’s dream!

But to his surprise, Isabel pointed over to
the Exhibition Centre, and he saw the back of Eva in her brown duffle coat with
the flash of scarlet at her neck and on her head in the form of a red bobble
hat disappearing into the building, Oscar running ahead of her.

“There is the lady from last night,” Isabel
said.

“Eva,” Rudi said, not missing the fact that
just saying her name gave him a little glow inside.

“Yes, Eva, and Oscar. Can we join them?”

“I thought he annoyed you,” Rudi said,
smiling.

“He is naughty. But he is also fun.” Isabel
scratched her nose. “Can we, Daddy?”

“Of course.” He took her hand, and they
crossed the road to the Exhibition Centre.

Rudi pushed open the door and they were met
with a rush of warm air. He stood for a moment in the foyer, taken aback by the
high ceilings and the beauty of the decorations. He had expected yet more
sickly-sweet representations of the Santa theme, and it was true that the woman
standing by the door to the main exhibition wore an elf costume, and the décor
consisted of the usual red and green colours. But the huge mural that covered
the whole of one wall had been superbly painted. It showed a smiling Santa riding
his sleigh through a wintry night, with Rudolph leading the reindeer at the
front, his red nose shining with sparkling paint. Behind them, the artist had
painted the
aurora borealis
, which glowed with iridescent greens and
blues against the midnight sky.

“They did a good job, didn’t they?” It was
Eva, who had obviously spotted him and come over to stand beside him. “What a
wonderful painting. I wish I could paint like that!”

He smiled and turned to face her. She’d
undone her duffle coat, and beneath it she wore jeans and a white sweater with
a silvery thread that—matched with the red scarf—made her look festive and
bright. “Good morning.”

“
Hyvaa huomenta
,” she said
carefully, then grinned. “How did that sound?”

“Almost perfect,” he said, touched that
she’d bothered to try to learn the Finnish words. “Except it’s
HUU-vaa
not
HY-vaa.
”

She said it again, perfectly this time, and
he nodded. “I’m terrible with languages,” she admitted as they made their made
through the door into the exhibition. “Just don’t have an ear for them. I have
no idea how you can be fluent in two.”

“Actually I speak French and German as
well,” he said. The truth was that he spoke English the best of his non-native
languages because Vanessa was half-English, but he didn’t want to talk about
his ex-wife today.

She turned startled eyes on him. “Good
grief. That is impressive.”

He decided he’d try to think of more
impressive things to tell her so she would look at him like that again, with an
mixture of admiration and wonderment, as if he’d said he’d walked on the moon.
“It is not so difficult,” he said, trying to be self-deprecating and not
wanting to appear arrogant. “And besides I am not quite there yet. I still find
contractions difficult.”

“I’d noticed. You say ‘I am’ not ‘I’m’, for
example. But you shouldn’t change. You have a lovely accent.”

He’d always thought the Finnish accent
slightly comical, hating the tell-tale musical lilt and trying to eliminate it
wherever he could. But her compliment pleased him. “Thank you.”

She smiled and indicated Oscar and Isabel
who were sitting on a bench together, watching a cartoon about Christmas
customs in different parts of the world. “That’s a nice picture, look.” She removed
her phone from her jeans pocket and took a photo of the two of them. “I’ll send
that to Bridget,” she said. “My mother-in-law.”

“Good idea.” He took one as well. “I will
send it to my mother. She will be thrilled that I have brought Izzy out of the
cabin and into the big wide world!”

Eva laughed, and he joined her as she began
to walk through the exhibition. As well as the cartoon, large displays concentrated
on the way that different people celebrated the festive season across the
globe. There was even a stall where you could try different types of food
served on Christmas Day in various countries, such as goat pepper soup from
Nigeria, a sweet cinnamon pudding from Lebanon, the usual Western turkey
dinner, and even a pavlova meringue pudding from New Zealand, which made Eva
laugh.

“It’s lovely being able to relax in such a
child-friendly place,” she said, watching Oscar tearing around to press buttons
and lift flaps on the displays of the types of presents given by different
cultures. “I love museums but I’m always wary about taking him into them in
case he knocks things over or breaks the glass or something.”

“It is certainly very well done here.” Rudi
looked around at the bright colours and glitter that made the whole room
sparkle. Half a dozen assistants dressed as elves wandered around the room to
help the children and answer questions, and everyone looked happy and excited
to be there. Rudi watched Oscar jump up and down at the sight of a huge pile of
presents lying under the enormous Christmas tree at the end of the room. The
boy nearly exploded with excitement when the elf told him there was one there
with his name on it.

“But you cannot open it until Christmas
Day,” the elf warned him. “At the moment it is just a box and it will not be
filled until Santa visits your room on Christmas Eve.”

Something inside Rudi melted at the look on
Oscar’s face. Oh, to be that innocent! There was something so beautiful about
youth—fresh and clean as the fields covered in snow outside. He looked down at
Isabel, standing at his side, and put his arm around her. “Do you think there
is a present for you there too?”

Isabel shrugged. “Maybe.”

Eva looked at her and smiled. “I wonder
what Santa will bring you on Christmas Eve?”

Isabel gave her an exasperated look. “Santa
is not real, Eva. I know my father buys my presents. I know there is no real
magic.”