Santa's Secret (3 page)

“What would you like to eat?” he asked his
daughter.

She looked up at the falling snow as she
thought. She wasn’t one of those children who only ate fish fingers. Vanessa was
very careful to liaise with Frieda to make sure her daughter’s diet was filled
with fresh fruit and vegetables so she didn’t get fat.

“Sausages,” Isabel concluded, surprising
him.

Oh well, he’d have to have the whiskey when
he got back to the cabin.
“Sausages it is then.” He held out his hand
and she slipped her mitten into it, and he headed for the family restaurant.

In the lobby, they handed their coats to
the waitress and paused in the doorway. At nearly five o’clock, the place was
packed, full of families, with lots of kids running off steam in the play area
at the end.

“I’m not sure we have a free table,” the
waitress apologised. “We have a waiting area where you can sit and have a
drink, and I’ll come and get you as soon as one becomes available.”

He nodded, a little irritated and tempted
to tell her he owned the place and see whether that made a difference as to
whether a table became available. But at that moment, he glanced over to the
window and saw Eva there, sitting with Oscar on a table with two spare chairs.

He hesitated. It would be extremely forward
to walk over there and ask to join her. She’d obviously come on holiday for
some peace, to spend time with her son. There didn’t appear to be a man on the
scene, but he had no idea why. Perhaps she was desperate to get away from men.
What if she said no? That would be embarrassing.

But then she said something to Oscar, who
threw his arms around her neck and planted a big kiss on her cheek, and she
laughed and hugged him. And something gave inside Rudi, like a rubber band
stretched too far. He wanted a little of that family fun. He felt as if she
were throwing handfuls of glitter into the air, and perhaps if he stood close
enough to them, some of it might land on him and Isabel.

He made up his mind.

“It is okay,” he said to the waitress,
taking Isabel’s hand in his again. “I have just seen a friend.” And he walked
across the busy room to their table.

Still laughing, Eva pulled Oscar’s arms
from around her neck and tried to get him to sit down again. She tapped his
plate. “More nuggets, Oscar.”

“More nuggets!” He sang the words, banging
his fork on the plate.

She sighed. He was over-excited, but that
wasn’t really surprising. The restaurant rang with the high-pitched squeal of hyperactive
children. At least she wasn’t the only parent with a loud child. Nobody would
be looking over and tutting because he wasn’t sitting still and eating with a
knife and fork.

Someone appeared at the table, and she
looked up, expecting to see one of the waiters with her pasta. To her surprise the
long legs belonged to the Viking from next door.

“Hi.” He looked a little wary at
interrupting her. “I am sorry to bother you. It is just that the restaurant is
a bit busy, and I was wondering whether we would be able to share your table?”
He glanced over his shoulder, and she followed his gaze to see all the other
tables filled.

She hesitated, and immediately he said, “It
is okay; it is no problem at all. I was hoping for a glass of wine so I will go
to the other restaurant.”

His beautiful accent warmed her, and she
smiled. “No, really, please join us. As long as you don’t mind the fact that
Oscar’s a little hyper. It may mean that the occasional piece of food finds its
way across the table to you.”

Rudi laughed. He gestured to the chair next
to the window and said to the girl at his side, “After you.” He glanced at Eva.
“This is Isabel, my daughter. Izzy, this is Eva and this is Oscar.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Isabel said, pulling
out the chair and sitting down.

“Likewise,” Eva said, “and what lovely manners.
I hope you can teach some to Oscar. Say hi, Oscar.”

“Hi, Oscar.” He continued to bang his fork
on his plate.

Eva took it away, ignored his wail and
grinned as Rudi sat opposite her. “Are you already regretting your decision?”

He picked up the menu. “I am so hungry, I
think I could sit on the floor and eat in the middle of Helsinki high street
without getting distracted.”

She laughed and leaned back to study him as
he ran his gaze down the menu options. He still wore his fisherman’s rib
sweater, although now she could see he had a white T-shirt under it for warmth.
Her initial conclusion of him as a Viking came back to her, and she could
totally picture him in a leather tunic with sandals and one of those horned
helmets on his head.

He looked up then and caught her gaze.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just thinking how
you look like a character from
Asterix and the Vikings.
”

He grinned.

She glanced at Isabel, trying to distract
his gaze from her hot cheeks. “And you look like a Viking princess with those
braids. I could never plait my hair as a girl. I always ended looking like a
witch with my dark hair.”

“My mother showed me how,” Isabel said in
perfect English, twirling one of the braids with a finger as she looked at her
own menu.

Rudi glanced at her, gave a small, rueful
smile and dropped his gaze back to the menu.

So Isabel’s mother was still around, but
not with them by the looks of it. Separated, then? Wishing she could ask, Eva
made Oscar sit down again, picked up a chicken nugget and put it in his fingers.

The waiter came up with her pasta. “Can I
take your order?” he asked Rudi.

“The pasta looks good,” he said, indicating
Eva’s plate. “I will have that.” He glanced at Isabel. “Sausages,
rakas?
”

“Yes, please.”

He nodded at the waiter. “The sausages and
fries, please.”

“With salad or baked beans, sir?”

“Salad,” Rudi said without consulting her.
The waiter nodded, took their drinks order and left.

“Wow,” Eva said to the girl. “Oscar won’t
even look at a piece of lettuce. I’m impressed.”

“Only rabbits eat green food,” Oscar
stated.

“Salad and vegetables are good for your
skin,” Isabel pointed out. “They keep you healthy.”

Oscar blew a raspberry, and Isabel looked
faintly shocked.

Eva smothered a smile. Rudi grinned. “He is
quite a handful.”

She looked fondly at her son. “He is. But I
like him like that. I’d rather he have a bit of spirit.”

Rudi nodded, but he didn’t say anything,
and Eva had the impression he didn’t agree. Certainly, his daughter looked the
epitome of a well-behaved child, sitting quietly, hands in her lap, watching
Oscar with the kind of expression Eva imagined would be on Oscar’s face when he
saw her eating salad.

Well, she wasn’t there to impress anyone,
and she didn’t have to apologise for anything. She decided to change the
subject.

“So you mentioned Helsinki—is that where
you’re from?”

He nodded. “Yes, although I work all over
the world. I spend quite a lot of time in the States, Dubai, Hong Kong, as well
as London.”

“What do you do?”

“Buy land, build developments, housing,
hospitals, anything really. I have an eye for a good site, and it has served me
pretty well.”

So, he was well off then. That much was
evident in his expensive wrist watch, his designer jeans, even the quality of
the sweater.

Eva looked across at Isabel, who was now
watching Oscar push his baked beans into a row with his finger. “Does Isabel go
with you around the world?”

“No, she stays with my mother in Helsinki.”

His voice didn’t change, but something in
the tone, possibly defensiveness or resentment, made her look up at him. His
face was carefully blank, but as she smiled, he blew out a big sigh and ran a
hand through his hair. “Sorry,” he said. “I think that came out harsher than I
meant it.”

“That’s okay,” Eva said, wondering what
bothered him. She glanced at Isabel, who was trying to show Oscar how to cut a
chicken nugget in half. Oscar was rebelling by singing loudly, but at least
they were both distracted.

Eva decided to probe a little. “It must be
difficult, leaving Isabel behind so much.” She speared some pasta on her fork
and raised her eyebrows innocently.

Rudi also glanced at his daughter, saw her
attention focussed on Oscar and looked back at Eva. “It is not easy,” he
murmured. “Vanessa—my ex-wife—moved away over a year ago and my mother feels we
have both abandoned Izzy.”

Eva knew the guilt and worry that parents
could engender in their children, and she smiled sympathetically. “Well, you
have to earn a living, and it’s not necessarily your fault if that means you
have to go abroad occasionally.”

His face lit with relief that she seemed to
understand and wasn’t about to throw an accusation at him. Had that been the
usual reaction of women he spoke to, then? “I try never to stay away for more
than a week at a time,” he said, “but sometimes it is difficult when there is a
convention on or something.”

“She doesn’t seem to be turning out badly,
anyway,” Eva said. “She’s a lovely young lady.”

Isabel’s gaze remained on Oscar, but her cheeks
reddened. So she
was
listening.

“She is very beautiful, just like her
mother,” Rudi said, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind his daughter’s ear.
He sounded almost regretful rather than pleased.

Eva speared some more pasta on her fork. A
rich, beautiful wife who no doubt lavished attention on her daughter the few
rare times she saw her. Eva could imagine how that would go. Presumably Rudi’s
grandmother was the force behind Isabel’s good manners and the squeaky-clean
little girl image, which implied Rudi felt the same way. “They grow up so
quickly, don’t they?” she said, chewing the pasta. “I know I’m keen to keep Oscar
as young as I can for as long as I can.”

“Hmm,” Rudi said, his blue eyes settling on
her thoughtfully.

The waiter brought up their drinks, and
Isabel sipped her water and watched Oscar blow bubbles in his lemonade. “The
sugar in fizzy drinks rots your teeth,” she told Oscar.

In reply, he blew even harder, spraying the
drink across the table.

Eva removed the glass and straw, ignored
his wail and told him that when he was sitting down and had eaten another
chicken nugget he’d get the drink back. Then she handed Isabel a serviette to
mop up the drips. “Sorry.”

“He is very naughty,” Isabel said.

“Isabel!” Rudi looked appropriately
embarrassed at her accusation.

“He’s a boy,” Eva pointed out. “And boy
behaviour isn’t necessarily bad behaviour. He’s not even four yet, so he
doesn’t always know how to behave in the right way. That’s why we have to teach
him.” She watched him eat the nugget, then gave him back his drink. This time
he sipped it, watching her carefully.

“So tell me about yourself,” Rudi said. Eva
looked back at him, surprised to see a warmth in his eyes. “Are you from
England? Your accent is…not quite English either, I think.”

She smiled. “I’m originally from New
Zealand.”

“Ah. Down Under!”

She laughed. “Yes. Although to be honest
that term usually refers to Australians.”

“I do not know much about New Zealand,” he
admitted. “There are two islands, yes? And the capital is Wellington.”

“Very good,” she said, impressed. “Most
people think it’s Auckland, as that’s the biggest city. And yes, there are two
islands. I live in at the top of the north island. It’s sub-tropical there,
very warm and humid in the summer.”

“This must seem very different to you.” He
gestured out of the window at the snow.

“Very. There is something lovely about a
cold festive season. Oddly, I suppose, we have snowmen and robins on all our
Christmas cards, even though our Christmas is hot. When I moved to the UK, I so
looked forward to a Dickensian Christmas, but unfortunately it tends to be mild
and damp there—I haven’t seen snow at all. So it’s lovely to come here and have
a ‘proper’ Christmas.”

“So you live in the UK?” He leaned back as
the waiter arrived with his pasta.

Eva pushed a few spirals around her plate.
“Yes. I went there on an OE—that’s what New Zealanders call it, the ‘overseas
experience’. Everyone does one at some point in their lives, usually. I met my
husband there four years ago, and I’ve lived there ever since.”

Rudi nodded. “Is he coming here to be with
you and Oscar for Christmas?”

She pushed her plate away. “No. He died
eighteen months ago.”

Rudi looked horrified at his blunder. “Oh
goodness. I am so sorry to hear that. How insensitive of me.”

That made her smile. “You weren’t to know.
It was a perfectly sensible question. And it’s okay—I mean, I’m okay. We’re
okay.” Now she was waffling. “I mean, I miss him of course…”

“Of course.”

“…but…” And now she’d dug herself a hole.
Jeez, she barely knew this man. How could she be pouring out the contents of
her heart so suddenly, as if she’d walked up to the hole and stumbled straight
in?

And yet his gaze was gentle, and Isabel and
Oscar were talking about the latest Disney movie as if they’d known each other
all their lives, and the snow was falling so softly and magically outside, and suddenly
Eva wanted to confide, wanted to share something with this gentle Viking, whose
blue eyes were watching her, curious and tempting her to talk, promising not to
be accusatorial.

“Go on,” he said.

She turned her glass of lemonade in her
fingers. “Damon’s family have been very good to me. My mother died when I was
young and I’m not close to my father. They’ve looked after me and Oscar, made
sure we want for nothing.”

“And you feel beholden to them because of
that,” he suggested.

She hesitated. Then, realising the world
hadn’t come to an end with his statement, she nodded slowly. “Yes. A bit.
Damon’s mother misses him terribly—of course she does; he was her eldest son.
And I’m happy to be there for her. But it’s just that she makes me feel so
terribly guilty because I don’t miss him as much as I should.” She finished in
a rush, not really believing she was finally putting voice to the thoughts that
had been in her head for so long.

Tears welled in her eyes as regret and
shame swept over her, and she sat back and blew her nose. What must Rudi be
thinking? Here she sat, only eighteen months a widow, saying she didn’t miss
her dead husband.
Wow, Eva. You really could win a Crappiest Wife
Competition, you know that?

Rudi leaned forwards and started eating his
pasta, then calmly picked up a stray chicken nugget and placed it back on
Oscar’s plate. “They look tasty,” he said to the boy, tapping the plate. “But I
bet you are full. You cannot eat them all, surely?”

“Yes, I can,” Oscar announced, contrary as
ever, and proceeded to stuff a whole one into his mouth.

“You should cut it in half first,” Eva
said, a little hoarsely, shooting Rudi a grateful look for not pressing the
issue and trying to distract things.