The Baby Who Saved Christmas

Alice slipped the straps of her backpack from her shoulders. She sat on the edge of the uncomfortable chair to make it easier to open the side pocket and remove an envelope. From that, she extracted a photograph. It was faded now but the colour was still good enough to remind her of the bright flame shade of Jeannette McMillan’s hair and that smile that could light up a room. A wave of grief threatened to bring tears and she blinked hard, focusing instead on the man in the picture. She raised her gaze to stare at the oversized portrait again.

With a nod, she handed the photograph to Julien.

‘My mother,’ she said quietly. ‘I wouldn’t have known who she was with except that she kept these magazine clippings about him.’ She glanced down at the folded glossy pages still in the envelope. ‘Well hidden. I only found them recently after she...she died.’

If she was expecting any sympathy for her loss it was not forthcoming. Julien merely handed the photograph back.

‘This proves nothing other than that your mother was one of André’s groupies. It’s ancient history.’

‘I’m twenty-eight,’ Alice snapped. ‘Hardly ancient, thanks. And my mother was not a “groupie”. I imagine she was completely in love...’

‘Pfff...’ The sound was dismissive. And then Julien shook his head. ‘Why now?’ he demanded. ‘Why today?’

‘I... I don’t understand.’

‘Where have you been for the last week?’

‘Ah... I went home to my village for a few days. And then I’ve been travelling.’

‘You don’t watch television? Or read newspapers?’ He raised his hands in a sweeping gesture that her grandmother would have labelled foreign and therefore ridiculously dramatic. ‘How could you not know?’

‘Know what?’

‘That André Laurent crashed his car three days ago and killed himself. That his funeral was today.’

‘Oh, my God...’ Alice’s head jerked as her gaze involuntarily flicked back to the huge portrait. ‘Oh...no...’

From the corner of her eye, she could see that Julien was following her gaze. For a long second he joined her in staring at the image of a man that was so filled with life it seemed impossible to believe that he was gone.

But then, with the speed of a big cat launching itself at its prey, Julien snatched up the paperweight from the desk and hurled it towards the portrait, creating an explosion of shattering glass, leaving behind a horrified silence that only served to magnify his chilling words.

‘I wish he’d done it years ago... If he had, my sister wouldn’t have married him. She would still be alive...’

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_a22ecf9b-e8d1-5ac1-afe4-2c8a44e89752)

THE SHOCK WAS MIND-NUMBING.

The pain this stranger was feeling was so powerful that Alice could feel it seeping into her own body to mix with the fear of knowing that she was alone with an angry man who was capable of violence. Compassion was winning over fear, however. His sister had been married to André Laurent. Presumably she’d been in the car with him in that fatal crash. She wanted to reach out and offer comfort in some way to Julien. To touch him...?

No. That would be the last thing he would accept. She could see the agonised way he was standing with every muscle clenched so that male pride could quell the need to express emotion. With a hand shading his eyes to hide from the world.

And self-pity edged its way into the overwhelming mix.

Alice had lost something here, too.

Hope.

She’d tried to keep it under control. Ever since she’d finally found the courage to return to the cottage that had been the only real home she’d ever known because it had been time she faced the memories. Time to accept that she’d lost her only family and that she had to find a way to move forward properly from her grief. To embrace life and every wonderful thing it had to offer and to dream of a happy future.

It had been time to sort through her mother’s things and keep only those that would be precious mementos.

She’d grown up in that tiny house with two women. Her mother and her grandmother. Strong women who’d protected her from the disapproval of an entire village. Women who had loved her enough to make her believe that the shameful circumstances of her birth didn’t matter. That she was a gift to the world simply because she existed.

Maybe it had been a bad choice to make the visit so close to Christmastime, when the huge tree was lit up in the village square and the shops had long since decorated their windows with fairy-lights and sparkling tinsel. The sadness that this would be her first Christmas with no family to share it with had been the undercurrent threatening to wash away the new direction she was searching for, and finding that envelope that had provided the information about who her father was had given that undercurrent the strength of an ocean rip.

Had given her that hope that had exploded into something huge the moment she’d walked into this room and seen that portrait. She had been ready to love this man—her unknown father.

She’d still had a family member. Someone who’d been denied any connection with the women who had raised her but with a connection to herself that had to mean something. She was a part of this stranger.

His daughter.

It felt quite possible she had loved him already. And now she had lost him before she’d even had the chance to meet him. She would never know if there were parts of her personality she might have inherited from that side of her gene pool. Like that rebellious streak maybe. Or the unusual gurgle of her laughter that always turned heads. Her brown eyes?

Yes. Even behind the shards of broken glass clinging to the frame of that portrait and the mist of the champagne spray, Alice could see that her father’s eyes were as dark as her own.

He looked so happy. Confident and victorious. And there was no denying how good looking André Laurent had been. Despite the disparaging reaction of the silent man beside her, Alice just knew that her mother had been in love and had had her heart broken. Why else had she never tried to find another relationship?

She would never even discover whether André remembered her mother. If she had, at least, been conceived in love on both sides.

Yes. That hope of finding something that could grow into a new but precious version of family was gone. It was dead and had to be buried. Like her father had been only this morning.

Her breath hitched and—to her horror—Alice felt the trickle of tears escaping.

And then she heard a heavy sigh.

‘Je suis désolé. I’m sorry.’ Julien’s voice had a very different timbre than she had heard so far. Softer. Genuine? Whatever it was, it made his accent even more appealing. ‘I should not have done that.’

Alice swallowed the lump in her throat. The fear had gone. This man wasn’t violent by nature. He had just been pushed beyond the limits of what anyone could bear. She knew what moments of despair like that could feel like.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, in barely more than a whisper. ‘I understand. I’m very sorry for your loss.’

The response was a grunt that signalled it was not a subject that he intended to discuss any further.

Alice was still holding the photograph of her parents. It was time to put it back in the envelope, along with the clippings that had supplied the name missing from her birth certificate. She slipped the envelope into the side pocket of her backpack and zipped it up. Then she picked up the straps to put it back on.

‘Where are you going?’

Alice shrugged. ‘I’ll find somewhere. It doesn’t matter.’

Julien moved so that he was between her and the door. ‘You can’t go out there. You can’t talk to those reporters. They would have a—what do you call it? A...paddock day with a story like this.’

There was a faint quirk of amusement to be found in the near miss of translation. ‘A field day.’ She shook her head. ‘I won’t talk to anyone.’

‘They’ll find out.’ Julien’s headshake was far sharper than her own had been. ‘They’ll discover who you are and start asking questions. Who else knows about this...claim of yours?’

Alice was silent. What did it matter if he didn’t believe her? Nobody else knew anything more than what had been impossible to hide. That her mother had gone to work for a summer in the south of France. That she had come home alone and pregnant.

‘Do you have any idea what the Laurent estate is worth?’ Julien’s gaze flicked over her from head to foot, taking in her simple, forest-green jumper, her high-street jeans and the well-worn ankle boots. The backpack that dangled from her hands. ‘No... I don’t suppose you do.’