Second Chance Under the Mistletoe, page 4
He had to fight an urge to trace her cheekbones with his fingers, to outline her mouth—just to make sure she was real. Her lips were still as lush and pretty as the day he’d first kissed her. Back then he’d been naïve enough to believe he would never kiss any other woman. And yet he had been falsely accused of infidelity. And the one person who should have been on his side had barracked against him from the other.
He kept his hands firmly fisted in his pockets. After all these years resentment that she had not believed in him still smouldered.
Back then a guy named Andrew, a friend of Natalie’s brother, Steven, had told him about the mining job he’d got in Western Australia. Talked up the opportunities and the salary. Jon had applied and been accepted too. Jon had travelled out with Andrew and they’d kept in touch.
It was Andrew who had sent Steven a photo of Jon, taken at one of the rare social gatherings on the remote site, in conversation with one of the drivers—an attractive blonde woman in a red dress. There were very few women in that mining world. Jon had been enjoying the rare female company, but in an entirely platonic way. Not so the woman. Apparently, she’d fancied him and considered him ripe for a fling. The photo captured the moment she’d moved too close to Jon, intent on seduction. What it hadn’t captured was Jon stepping back once she’d made her intention clear and walking away from her so fast he’d practically been running.
Jon still wondered what had motivated Andrew to send that photo to Steven, informing him he should know what his brother-in-law was up to in Australia. Natalie’s family had immediately assumed the worst. By the time Jon had even had a chance to defend himself he’d been branded a cheater.
Natalie should have been his. Not just back then, but for the time in between. Lucky old Hugo, to have had her as his wife for all those years.
Natalie was wearing gloves, but he could see the shape of her rings on the third finger of her left hand. He wondered what had happened to the wedding ring he had bought her, a narrow band of gold bought from a high-street jeweller—the cheapest one they’d had. He was sad for Natalie’s sake that she’d been left a widow, but Jon had had no love for Hugo.
Hugo, the son of wealthy friends of the Lewis family, had made his interest in Natalie quite clear, sniffing around her even when Natalie had been married to Jon. Surprisingly, Natalie’s parents had invited him with his parents to Jon and Natalie’s small, rushed wedding before the pregnancy started showing, where Hugo had mournfully watched the ceremony.
Nineteen-year-old Jon, arrogant in his youth and confident in Natalie’s love, hadn’t seen him as a threat. In fact, he and Natalie had secretly laughed about his obvious crush on her. The fact that staid Hugo had been twenty-six to Natalie’s then eighteen had seemed, to them, to be somehow obscene. Hugo had been so old and boring. But Hugo had had the approval of Natalie’s conservative, snobby parents.
Jon had been shocked, but not altogether surprised, when Natalie had got engaged to Hugo almost as soon as the ink had dried on their divorce documents—the divorce Jon had been coerced into. Her parents had obviously turned their daughter around to their way of thinking—that Jon wasn’t good enough for her. It hadn’t been easy for him to fly out from the mines in outback Australia in an attempt to stop her from making a mistake, but he’d done it. Only for Natalie to tell him it was too late; she’d made her choice and it was final. And that he’d hurt her too much for her to ever again be able to trust him. Hugo could offer her everything he couldn’t, and she was going to marry him.
Natalie’s parents had never liked Jon, they’d made that clear from the beginning. Not that the beginning had been all that auspicious. He’d first met Mr and Mrs Lewis—he’d always had to call them that—when he and Natalie had had to sheepishly tell them she was pregnant. They had erupted. All his fault, of course. A boy from ‘up north’, his father a tradesman, his mother a shop assistant, he hadn’t fitted in with their plans for their daughter. More to the point, they hadn’t let him into the family circle. They’d done everything they could to make his life hell. The mother had been the worst, but the father had been cruel, too.
Jon had been deemed an irresponsible boy who had seduced their daughter and led her to drop out of university. Getting pregnant ‘out of wedlock’ was hardly a crime back then, but to them it had been. How many times had they told him he had ruined Natalie’s life?
Fact was, he’d also had to drop out of university, to the distress of his parents. Student grants available to the young family wouldn’t cut it—and the room at Natalie’s parents’ house hadn’t come for free. He’d had to go out to work. He had been the first person in his immediate family to go to university and his family had had high hopes for him. They’d blamed Natalie. Although they’d been kinder to her than her parents had been to him, and at least they’d welcomed the baby. He’d more than fulfilled their hopes now, and his father had died five years ago very proud of him.
Now Jon took a step back from Natalie. ‘Seriously, no one would believe you were the mother of a grown-up daughter.’
‘Must be the miracle face cream I spend a fortune on,’ she said, though her voice wasn’t as steady as it needed to be to carry off the sort-of joke.
‘So now I know something about you that I didn’t know before,’ he said.
‘What is that?’ she said warily.
‘That you buy expensive face cream, of course,’ he teased.
She smiled. He caught his breath at how her smile warmed her face, softening the tension she’d been holding there since they’d met in the car park, obvious in the tight set of her jaw. He thought back to how many years it had been since he’d heard her infectious laughter but couldn’t place a time.
There hadn’t been much laughter in their final months together. Not while they’d been living under her mother’s rule with not enough money to be independent. Not with Natalie having a difficult time getting over Clem’s birth. Not while they’d been getting used to having a baby. Their marriage had come under tremendous strain and had begun to fray. Then had come the offer of the very well-paying job in the mines of Western Australia.
But now, like her, he didn’t want to poke around in the past. ‘Can we talk about our future as grandparents?’ he asked.
‘I’m sure we’ll both do our best for Clem and the baby,’ Natalie said a little stiffly.
‘While doing our best to avoid each other when I’m in London, you mean?’
‘Yes, although I concede there will be times we’ll have to spend in each other’s company.’
‘Understood,’ he said coolly.
Her obvious reluctance to have anything to do with him wounded him, her words stabbing through the protective barriers he had formed around his heart over the years. After all, she was the one who had chosen to end their marriage with her accusations of infidelity and desertion. Jon had never cheated on her—not with the girl in the red dress or anyone else. Her family had been only too quick to believe the worst of him. Natalie had leapt on any excuse to be free of him. He’d always believed that. He’d been too young and inexperienced to know what else he could do about it.
‘But I think we would handle the situation better if we knew more about each other’s lives,’ he said. ‘It’s only two weeks until Christmas. Can we make the effort to get to know each other in that time? Even acknowledge that we could become friends of a sort? You know, bond over our shared care of Clem and her baby?’
‘Friends? Do you think so?’
He paused. ‘Perhaps not quite friends, although we were friends long ago.’
‘We were never just friends,’ she said slowly.
An awkward silence fell between them. Was she remembering the fierce passion that had immediately flared between them, the overwhelming obsession they’d had for each other? First-time love. He had never forgotten it. Although he’d had serious relationships since, even been married, nothing had ever come anywhere near the intensity of those youthful feelings. No one else had engaged his emotions so deeply. ‘You don’t know how to love,’ his second ex-wife had accused. But he had loved Natalie, deeply and completely. Perhaps there hadn’t been any love left in him for anyone else.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Perhaps friendship wasn’t the correct word. But we are linked through Clem and our future grandchild.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You make a good point. We should get to know each other a bit better. I think—’
There was a rustling in the bushes ahead of them and her little dog suddenly took off, in pursuit of what was most likely a rabbit. The leash jerked Natalie forward.
‘Freddie. Leave it! Watch me.’
Freddie skidded to a halt and looked back at Natalie with his dark button eyes. He trotted back to her, somewhat reluctantly, Jon thought.
‘Good boy,’ Natalie said, as she pulled out a treat from her pocket. She held it out on her hand to Freddie, who demolished it with gusto.
‘He’s a well-trained dog,’ Jon said.
‘No thanks to me. He came well trained.’
Jon paused. ‘So, there’s something I don’t know about you that I’d like to know—how you acquired this cute mutt. And what about your flourishing career as a dog portraitist? That came as a surprise to me.’
* * *
Natalie leaned down to Freddie to scratch behind his ears so she could avoid looking at Jon while she formulated an answer. Clem must have told him about the dog portraits. She didn’t want to reveal too much about herself to her ex, and yet what he said made absolute sense.
Like it or not, Jon was going to be a part of her life because he was her daughter’s father, and the baby’s grandfather. It would work better if they knew some basic facts about each other’s lives. If she could manage to keep thoughts of what he’d been to her all those years ago firmly locked away. Not that she’d ever been very good at that. It had never taken much to bring him suddenly to mind: an expression in Clem’s matching green eyes, a way she had of twisting her mouth that was just like her father, a snatch of the song that they had sung together that first night. But she’d got good at pushing those thoughts right to the back of her consciousness. It was the other thoughts of him that had never been as easily suppressed.
She looked back up at Jon. ‘Shall we walk on? Freddie is getting bored.’
Jon fell into step beside her, their feet almost immediately finding a common pace. She noticed she was as careful as he was to keep a polite distance. No accidental nudging of shoulders or brushing of arms. But she was intensely aware of his presence. Was that a hint of the same spicy soap he’d used back then?
Jon was the first to speak. ‘Clem told me she’d always wanted a dog but that Hugo wouldn’t allow one in the house.’
Wouldn’t allow. That was Hugo all right.
‘That’s true. About Hugo, I mean. He was allergic to dogs. Cats too.’
‘Fair enough. Although I believe there are breeds that are less allergenic than others.’
‘He was allergic to every dog,’ she said bluntly.
Hugo had been fastidious. A dog brought mess and chaos, or so he’d said. It didn’t matter how much Clem had pleaded, a dog was never going to be allowed. And yet he’d given Clem so much, she’d had the best of everything. Just not a dog or cat.
‘So where did Freddie come in?’ Jon asked.
‘The house felt very empty after Hugo died.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘We’d been together for a long time.’ She paused. ‘Thank you for sending a card.’ She wished now that she’d opened it.
‘S’right,’ he said gruffly. ‘I felt bad for you and Clem. Pancreatic cancer, Clem told me.’
‘Undiagnosed until it was too late,’ she said. ‘It was a terrible shock. Sometimes I still can’t believe he’s gone. He was way too young.’
‘It does seem unfair,’ Jon said.
She took a deep, steadying breath. ‘I really don’t want to talk about it.’
Her life had turned completely upside down after Hugo’s shock diagnosis. Even two years after his death, she was still finding her place in a suddenly reconfigured world.
They walked in silence before Natalie took up the conversation again. ‘I started my dog portraits a few years ago. I’d taken a few painting classes, just for fun. I’d painted off and on over the years but felt I needed lessons. One of the other students loved a portrait I did of a dog. She asked me to paint her Labrador and it went from there. An interest became a business of sorts.’
Hugo had grumbled about her new interest. Not just because of the mess but because, she’d realised, he hadn’t liked her attention being diverted from him. But for the first time in their marriage, she’d stood her ground. She’d needed something more outside the office to occupy her after Clem left home for university. Eventually Hugo had agreed to fixing up a disused potting shed for her messy weekend ‘hobby’.
‘But your subjects weren’t allowed in the house?’
‘That’s right. I had to go and meet the dog in its own surroundings, which was better.’ If often inconvenient. ‘Also, I sometimes work only from photos. I get orders off my website.’
‘Makes sense,’ he said.
But Natalie could tell he wasn’t totally convinced. Hugo had been everything she’d thought he’d be when she’d eventually given into the pressure to marry him for Clem’s sake. He’d been kind, he’d been generous, a ‘good provider’, but he had also liked having everything his way. It was only after she’d been left on her own that she’d realised how much she’d deferred to him. She would never give up her independence again.
‘Anyway, I began to think I would like my own dog. However, I also planned to travel and thought fostering dogs might be a good idea. The idea of fostering is temporary care, to get a dog ready for its forever home, and then hand it on.’
‘A worthy idea. So Freddie is waiting for a new home?’
She laughed. ‘I fell in love with him and he with me. I had to keep him.’
‘Where did he come from?’
‘You mean before the shelter?’
Jon nodded.
‘He belonged to an old couple who doted on him. They died within weeks of each other. Their adult children didn’t want Freddie and surrendered him, knowing full well there was a good chance a dog this age would be euthanised.’ She couldn’t keep the anger and indignation from her voice.
Jon cursed under his breath, letting her know exactly what he thought of the adult children’s behaviour.
‘I thought so too,’ she said.
‘Freddie was lucky to find you,’ he said.
‘I was lucky to find him,’ she said.
‘I’m glad it worked out.’ He paused. ‘What does owning Freddie mean for your plans to travel?’
‘I have a reciprocal dog-sitting arrangement with my next-door neighbour. Clem will always take him if I want to go away for longer than a few days.’
‘Might not that change after she has her baby?’
She shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I’ll worry about that if it happens. She loves Freddie too. What about you? Do you have a dog back in Perth?’
He shook his head. ‘Sadly, a dog could never fit into my life. I’ve had to travel to mining sites all around the world—often in very remote areas.’
Like a child wouldn’t have fitted into his life.
‘How did you end up working like that?’
Mining had been meant to be a temporary job. Just a year before he would come back to her with enough money so that they could get their own place.
She thought back to that terrible time when Clem was a baby and she and Jon were living with her parents. It had become difficult to stay at Durham once her pregnancy advanced. Her mother had never let her forget how lucky she was that she and her father had taken them in and let her have the baby at their home. She’d suffered badly from morning-noon-and-night sickness, which had made it impossible for her to hold down any job.
For all that, she’d loved Clementine the minute the midwife had placed her on her tummy. But post-partum depression had crept up on her until she’d been deep in the grip of it. Her mother didn’t believe in mental illness of any kind—she’d told her to buck up and be grateful for her family support. Natalie had felt as if she were sinking. Neither she nor Jon had had any experience of babies and sometimes simply hadn’t known what to do. Lack of money had been a real issue. So had her parents’ ongoing hostility towards Jon and his resentment of it.
Looking back, her first months with baby Clementine were a bit of a blur. Because she’d been medicated for the post-partum depression? Or just utterly exhausted, doubting herself, and frightened for the future? She hadn’t been herself, that was for sure.
Several times Jon had gone to work for a few weeks with his father in his construction business near Lancaster. His absence had been a relief. The house had been so much more peaceful without her parents picking fault with Jon and him flaring back at them. For him to take up the offer of a stupendously well-paid job in the mines of Western Australia hadn’t seemed much more of a stretch from going up to the north of England to work. Neither of them had addressed the issue of their unravelling marriage. She really hadn’t been in the right state of mind to be making such a decision. Had he been? Did Jon ever think back to that time and wonder if they could have done it better? Water under the bridge, she reminded herself.
‘I started as the lowest of the low, a labourer, when I first went over to Western Australia,’ Jon said. ‘It was tough. Really tough. Not just the work but the isolation and lack of communication. But I was young, and strong and motivated to make as much money as I could as quickly as I could.’
For her and Clem?
The unspoken words seemed to hang in the air between them. But she had asked him not to talk about their past.
‘You became very successful, I know that,’ she said.
‘I ended up as a mines security specialist, travelling around the world.’ He paused. ‘But where I really did well was investing early in lithium and other rare earth minerals. Crucial components in modern technology and becoming more so.’
