Santa's Secret (7 page)

Rudi walked across the yard, making sure
Oscar didn’t alarm the reindeer, to see Eva and his daughter watching them. He
felt a little calmer now. He wasn’t really angry with Isabel—it was hardly her
fault that she’d found out about Santa at such a young age, although he was a
little cross because he’d tried to explain the night before that she had to
pretend for Oscar’s sake, and he didn’t want to ruin the little boy’s
Christmas.

Part of him wished he’d prolonged the
fantasy a little longer for her. In the big scheme of things, of course, it was
nothing—what did it matter whether Isabel believed in Santa or not? She would
still get presents, could still enjoy the festive season, and although they
weren’t particularly religious as a family, the true meaning behind Christmas and
the Nativity story would still be a part of their lives.

But it was a bigger problem than that.
Seeing Oscar so excited and caught up in the magic, and listening to Eva talk
about trying to keep Oscar’s innocence for as long as she could, made Rudi feel
that between them, he and Vanessa were forcing Isabel to grow up too quick. He
didn’t know if he’d ever have any more children—Isabel might be his only chance
to bring a child into this world, and he wanted her to hold onto her innocence
as long as she possibly could.
You spend a long time grown up
, he
thought, a peculiar ache developing inside him as he watched her standing
quietly, the image of respectability compared to Oscar, who climbed onto the
barrier, fell off and started wailing. His mother was right—he’d spent too long
apart from her. Surely he hadn’t missed out on her childhood altogether?

He pulled Isabel towards him and kissed her
forehead. “What would like to do now,
rakas
?”

“We’re going to have a look around the
shops,” Eva said, a little shyly. “If you’d like to join us.”

Isabel nodded, brightening, and so all four
of them walked into the village and entered the large building containing the
shops selling all manner of souvenirs for the tourists.

Rudi followed Eva as she led the way around
the stalls with a carefully controlled Oscar as they passed the fine ceramics,
the intricate gold and silver jewellery, the reindeer furs and handmade hide
products, and the local delicacies. Rudi smiled and nodded each time they
pointed something out to him, and he tried to take in how the place looked with
regard to the sale of the site, but he found it difficult to concentrate and
felt flat, lacking in enthusiasm.

He watched Eva bend down to talk to Oscar,
pointing out the stitching on a reindeer toy, full of love and attention for
her son, and his throat tightened. The whole crumbling mess of his
marriage—indeed his whole life—washed over him, and he stopped walking,
overwhelmed for a moment by the bleakness of his future. He was not normally an
emotional man; usually he would die rather than reveal his innermost feelings,
preferring instead to keep them clamped tight behind a façade of controlled
composure, and the sudden wave of emotion took him by surprise.

Eva stood, watched Isabel lead Oscar over
to inspect a huge basket of toys, and came to stand beside him. “Are you okay?”

He looked down at her, startled that she
had picked up on his feelings. “Just tired I guess.”

She said nothing for a moment, and they
walked on slowly along the line of stalls. She reached out to touch a sparkling
piece of embroidery, let her fingers brush across a woven rug, and he let his
gaze brush over her in the same way. She’d clipped up her hair today, and he
admired the curve of her neck and jaw, her neat ears, the white skin lying just
behind them. He could imagine placing a kiss there, nuzzling his nose into her
hair.

“Christmas is such a strange time,” she
said. “I love it in so many ways—it is magical, even as a grown up, perhaps
because it tends to remind us of how we felt as children—that time before we
had any worries.”

“True.” He tried to drag his attention away
from her lips as they moved, and focus on what she was saying.

“But I think it also brings with it a huge
amount of pressure,” she continued. “We’re told that we’re all supposed to be
joyous, and we have to spend lots of money to make it a success. That we have
to cook huge dinners and spend hours in the kitchen. That it’s a time to play
happy families, and if you’re not part of the standard two-point-four family,
then you’re made to feel as if you’ve somehow failed.”

“That is also true,” he agreed. “I used to
love Christmas as a child, but I admit as an adult, I do not enjoy it as much.”

“Likewise,” she said. “And that’s a shame.
Perhaps that’s why we want to hold onto the magic for our children.”

He nodded. Her dark lashes lifted as she
looked up, and her dark brown eyes studied him. He was beginning to enjoy her
calm manner, her lack of fuss about everything. Perhaps because she was an
actress, Vanessa always heightened everything into a drama, and at his office everyone
was busy and stressed. It was refreshing to spend time with someone so laid
back.

As if on cue, Oscar wailed, and they turned
to see Isabel pulling him away from a large toy reindeer.

“Let go!” he yelled, trying to tear his arm
away from her grip.

“Isabel!” Rudi said the words harder than
he’d meant, embarrassed that she was restraining another person’s child.

“He was going to run off with the toy,” she
protested, letting the boy go.

“Thank you, Isabel,” Eva said smoothly,
crossing the room quickly to catch Oscar’s hand. “Come on, sweetie. Time to
go.”

Oscar threw a tantrum. Lay on the floor and
screamed and kicked his feet, right in the middle of the shop.

Isabel moved to Rudi side and he held her
hand tightly, uncertain what to do. Didn’t only two-year-olds have tantrums? He
hadn’t been around much when Izzy was that age and he could only remember her having
an outburst once in a supermarket. Vanessa had been absolutely horrified and
completely incapable of dealing with it, and he had been just as bewildered.
He’d picked Izzy up and carried her out, but she’d fought him the whole way,
pulling his hair and kicking him, and he’d found the whole thing terribly
embarrassing and traumatic. He’d had to fight the urge to smack her, which had
upset him even more because normally he would never have dreamed of laying a
hand on her. And anyway, when they got outside and Vanessa had done just that,
giving the shrieking girl a sharp tap on the backside to try and shock some
sense into her, it hadn’t helped at all and had in fact only seemed to make
things worse.

Shortly after that he’d gone away again
frequently on business, and with Vanessa working it would have been his mother
who’d dealt with any other outbursts.

People started to look over, Oscar’s
screams loud enough to carry down the chain of stalls. Eva dropped to her
haunches by his side, but she didn’t try to pick him up or restrain him.
Instead, Rudi heard her tell the boy quietly that she would wait for him by the
door, and when he was ready, she had some chocolate for him and he could have
it outside. Then she just got up and walked the short distance to the door,
leaving him in the middle of his paddy, and calmly flicked through a book from
one of the stalls.

Rudi and Isabel exchanged a glance, not
sure what to do. He didn’t want to interfere in a situation that Eva had
obviously handled before. So he turned away and pretended to look at the
nearest stall, and Isabel joined him.

“Is she just going to leave him screaming?”
Isabel whispered in Finnish.

“She knows what she’s doing,” he replied,
hoping that was the case.

And sure enough, after about another thirty
seconds of screaming, Oscar obviously realised he wasn’t getting any attention,
and he sat up, rubbed his face, pushed himself to his feet and ran over to his
mother. She calmly took his hand and led him outside.

Rudi followed, Isabel in tow, and saw them
both sitting on a bench overlooking the snowy forest. Oscar sat picking
chocolate buttons out of a packet, quiet as anything.

Rudi walked over to Eva and sat beside her,
while Isabel scrunched through the snow, making patterns with her footprints.

“Are you okay?” he asked Eva quietly.

She grinned at him. Her cheeks were just
the tiniest bit pink, which told him that she was a little embarrassed. “I’m
fine. Sorry about that.”

“It happens.”

Oscar tugged her hand. “Can I go and play
with Isabel?”

“Of course you can.”

He got off the bench and ran off to join
the girl, sticking sucking chocolate buttons, and he walked around behind her
in her footsteps.

Eva sighed and gave Rudi a wry look. “I
hate it when that happens. Everyone looks at me as if to say ‘why aren’t you
dealing with him?’ I used to, you know, I used to try and force him to do
whatever I wanted. Like sometimes he refuses to get in the car, and I’ve picked
him up and tried to buckle him in, and I’ve yelled at him because people seem
to expect you to do that, but it always ends up with me in tears and him in
tears. I decided one day that I wasn’t going to do that anymore. So I deal with
it my way. With chocolate.” She smiled.

Rudi nodded. “It seems to work.”

“It does. Bridget thinks it’s rewarding Oscar
for his bad behaviour, but I don’t see it like that—I see it the chocolate as a
reward for becoming calm again.”

“If it works for you, then you are right,
you should not listen to anyone else.” Her words felt like a revelation to him.
She was so calm and relaxed about everything. She was like
aloe vera
,
like a soothing balm to his frayed nerves.

It had just started snowing again, the
flakes fluttering down across the landscape, although they didn’t quite reach
where they were sitting under the shelter. He watched Isabel go around the
field in a figure eight, lit by the line of lamps that followed the path, Oscar
following along behind her. Rudi smiled at them before turning back to Eva.

She was looking up at him, and she gave a
little shy smile as if embarrassed he’d caught her, but she didn’t look away.
Her cheeks still had a light pink blush to them, and her lips were glossy, as
if she’d applied lip balm again recently. If he pressed his own to them, they
would be slightly sticky.

Sexual awareness stirred within him, like a
great bear unfurling after hibernation, stretching and yawning. He’d denied
himself these feelings for a long time, even after his divorce, rusty with
dating and unwilling to become involved again, to open himself up to being
hurt. He’d concentrated on work instead, throwing himself into sport in the
evenings and weekends, burning up his energy on the squash courts, cycling, or
playing football.

He was out of practice with women. And
besides, this was hardly the right environment was it? They were only there for
a few nights, and they both had kids. It wasn’t as if anything could happen.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

The question surprised him, and he raised
his eyebrows.

“Sorry,” she added. “Did I say that out
loud?”

That made him laugh. He turned in the seat,
leaned an elbow on the back of the bench and rested his head on his hand. “No,
I do not have a girlfriend. Do you have a boyfriend?”

She laughed. “No. I do not have a
boyfriend.” She said it in the same sing-song accent he knew he used himself,
and he grinned.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Not at all.” She tipped her head to the
side, eyes dancing. “Maybe. A little bit.”

He smiled. “I do not understand why you are
still single. I thought you would have been snapped up by all the eligible
bachelors in England.”

She looked down at her mittens. “Opinions
vary on the length of time that’s required after your husband dies before you
should date again.” Another wry look.

“Your mother-in-law discourages it?”

“Not openly. But she’d be horrified.” She
blew out a breath and looked up at the sky, still a twilight blue, just a
little lighter than its night time hue. “And now I sound callous and
insensitive. I’m a terrible person.”

He chuckled. “No you are not. Eva, you are
very young. How old are you, twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Goodness. So young! You cannot be expected
to stay single for the rest of your life. If your husband had died last week I
might agree with your mother-in-law, but a whole year has passed and, to be
honest, I think it would be terrible for you to deny yourself future
happiness.”

Her brown gaze rested on him again. “I
could say the same for you,” she said softly. “I get the feeling you haven’t
exactly been Mr. Sociable since your divorce.”

“True,” he admitted. “It is difficult
to…how do they say it? To get back in the saddle again.”

They both laughed.

Eva’s calm gaze appraised him. “I just
wish…”

He looked at her pink lips, imagined them
pressing against his. “What do you wish?”

“Don’t you just wish, sometimes, that
things didn’t have to be complicated? That there was a way to…I don’t know…”
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Indulge, have fun, without
any strings, without worrying about the future?”