Maids Under The Mistletoe Collection. Christy McKellen

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      ‘Every day after you’d gone I told myself that I’d call you tomorrow, that once things had settled down I’d get on a plane and go and find you, but they never did.’

      She mopped absently at the spillage with a tissue that she’d pulled out of her bag.

      ‘Months bled into each other until suddenly a whole year had passed and by that time it felt too late. I’m sorry I let things drag on the way I did, but I didn’t want to have to face the reality that there couldn’t be any us any more. That my life with you was over. You were everything I’d ever wanted but I had to let you go. I didn’t feel I had any choice.’

      She rubbed a hand across her forehead and blew out a calming sigh. ‘The other problem was that my mother wasn’t well after my father died. She became very depressed and couldn’t get out of bed for a long time. I needed to be there for her twenty-four hours a day. To check she wasn’t going to do anything—’ She paused, clearly reliving the terror that she might come back home to find herself an orphan if she left her mother alone for too long.

      Jack nodded and closed his eyes, trying to make it clear he understood what she was telling him without her needing to spell it out.

      Dragging in a breath, she gave him a sad smile. ‘So it was left to me to organise the funeral, arrange the quick sale of the home I’d lived in since I was a little girl and face the angry creditors on my own while my mother lay in bed staring at the wall.’

      ‘I could have helped you, Emma, if you’d let me,’ he broke in, feeling angry frustration flare in his chest.

      ‘I didn’t want you involved, Jack. I was hollowed out, a ghost of my former self, and I didn’t want you to see me like that. You would have hated it. I wanted to be sparkling and bright for you but my father’s death drained it all away.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, it was my family’s mess, not yours.’

      He leaned in towards her. ‘I was your family too, Emma. Not by blood, but in every other way. But you pushed me away.’

      She took a shaky-sounding breath. ‘I know my decision to stay in England hurt you terribly at the time, but my mother needed me more than you did. She would have had no one left if I’d slunk off to America and there was no way I could just leave her. There was no one else to look after her. All her friends—and I use the word in the loosest of terms—abandoned her so they didn’t find themselves tainted by our scandal.’

      Her voice was wobbling now with the effort not to cry. ‘I know that my father would have expected me to look after my mother. He would have expected us to stick together. I didn’t want to dishonour his memory by running away from our family as if I was ashamed to be a part of it.’

      She held up a hand, palm facing him. ‘I accept that he made mistakes, borrowing all that money, but I believe he did it in order to make his family happy. So I’ve spent the last six years working hard to pay off his debts. To finally clear our name—’

      Her voice caught on the last word and Jack shifted in his seat, distraught to hear how much she’d suffered in silence, but he didn’t speak, letting her keep the floor, sensing how much she needed to let it all out now.

      ‘I didn’t want you to be dragged down by the mistakes my father made too. It wouldn’t have been fair on you when you were so excited about taking that amazing job offer in America. I knew it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and how determined you were to shun the unfair advantage of your family name and do something great with your life on your own merits. It would have been cruel of me to take that chance away from you, Jack.’

      ‘There would have been other opportunities though, Emma. I was more concerned about the two of us making a new life for ourselves together,’ he broke in, before he could stop himself.

      She sighed and rubbed at her brow. ‘I wasn’t the same flighty, naïve girl you’d fallen in love with by then though. My father’s death changed me. The girl you knew died the moment he did. The last thing you needed was an emotionally crippled wife pulling at your attention while you were trying to build a successful future for us. You would have only resented me for it.’ She frowned. ‘And I loved you too much at the time to put you through all that.’

      At the time.

      Those three words said it all. She had loved him, but apparently she didn’t feel the same way any more.

      His chest felt hollow with sadness, the desolation of it spreading out from the centre of him, eating away at his insides.

      Her voice had become increasingly shaky as she’d gone on with her speech and she stood up now and brushed a tear away from under her eye.

      ‘Will you excuse me? I’m just going to visit the bathroom before we get back into the car,’ she said, giving him a wobbly smile.

      ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, grateful for a break from the intense atmosphere so he could mull over everything she’d just told him.

      He sat staring into space after she’d walked away, acutely aware of the bizarre normality of the sounds in the garden all around them while he desperately tried to make sense of the heavy weight of emotion pressing in on him.

      Emma’s painful confession had pierced him to the core.

      He was in awe of her courage and her strength in the face of such a humbling experience, but he still couldn’t shake the painful awareness that she’d chosen her mother over him.

      Frustration bit at him. If she’d only let him know what was going on at the time, how bad things had got for her, he could have helped her. But she’d chosen to shut him out and handle it all without him. She hadn’t trusted him or his love for her enough to let him be the husband he’d wanted to be.

      Though, to be fair to her, he had to give her credit for showing such strength of character in stepping up and taking on her responsibilities, even though it had meant giving up a life with him—an easy, wrapped-in-cotton-wool existence.

      If she’d been a more fragile person she could have asked him to pay off her family’s debts and saddled him with a reputation for having a gold-digging wife, but she hadn’t wanted that for him. Or for herself.

      She had more integrity than that.

      She returned a minute later and he stood up to meet her, frustration, hurt and sorrow for what they’d lost still warring in his mind.

      Just as she reached the table her phone rang and she plucked it out of her bag, giving him an apologetic smile at the interruption and muttering, ‘It’s my mother, I’d better get this,’ before answering the call.

      She sounded worried at first, which made his heart thump with concern that there was more bad news to deal with, but then her voice softened into a soothing coo as she listened to a tale of woe that her mother had called to impart to her. From what he could glean from Emma’s responses it sounded as if her mother’s new husband, Philippe, had broken something while skiing off-piste with friends and her mother was going to have to rush back to France to see him. Emma assured her that that was fine and that she’d fly over very soon to see them both.

      After cutting the call she confirmed the news, assuring him that it was better if her mother didn’t hear about what was going on with them right now as she was already upset and worried about Philippe.

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