Barbara Hannay - A Very Special Holiday Gift

Good, he might leave her in peace.

Chloe waited for him to replace his eye mask. Instead, he pointed to one of the magazines in her lap. ‘Do you mind?’

This time, she didn’t try to hide her surprise. ‘You want to read one of these? A mother and baby magazine?’

Her corporate executive playboy boss could not be serious. The Zac Corrigan she knew wouldn’t be caught dead with such an incriminating piece of reading material in his hands, not even in the relative anonymity of an international flight.

‘Yes, please,’ he said, holding out his hand and smiling blandly. ‘I’d like to be educated.’

Lips compressed to stop herself from making a smart retort, Chloe handed him a magazine that focused on a baby’s first six months. She supposed he was probably teasing her, but he might be trying to distract himself from thinking too much about his sister.

It was even possible that he genuinely wanted to learn. After all, if a father for Liv’s baby couldn’t be traced, Zac might soon find himself in complete charge of a newborn.

For a while they both read in peaceful silence, the small glow of their reading lights making golden cones in the otherwise darkened cabin. But Chloe couldn’t relax. For one thing, she was too curious about how Zac might be reacting to the contents of his magazine.

But it wasn’t long before he leaned close, speaking softly. ‘Did you know that babies can stare at you while they sleep?’

‘Excuse me?’

He smiled. ‘It says here that they can sleep with their eyes half open. It looks pretty spooky, apparently.’

Although his smile, up close, was dangerous for Chloe’s heart health, she couldn’t help smiling back at him. ‘Well, the article I’m reading warns that babies sometimes don’t sleep at all.’

‘No.’ Zac feigned complete shock. ‘That can’t be right.’

‘Well, I guess they sleep eventually, but some stay awake for much longer than they’re supposed to.’

‘A bit like us,’ he said, looking around the business class cabin at all the other passengers, who appeared to be contentedly sleeping.

Chloe sighed. ‘I guess we really should turn our lights out and try to sleep.’

‘Yes, we should.’ He closed the magazine and handed it back to her. ‘Thanks for that. Most enlightening.’

By the time she’d stowed the magazines away, Zac had turned off his reading light, pulled down his eyeshade and folded his arms over his wide chest. ‘Goodnight, Ms Meadows.’

He usually only addressed her this way when he was in a playful mood, which wasn’t very often, mostly when he’d pulled off some extraordinarily tricky business coup. Chloe wondered if the playboy was coming out in him now, simply because he was lying beside a young woman who was close enough to touch and kiss.

That thought had no sooner arrived than her body reacted, growing warm and tingly and tight.

Oh, for heaven’s sake .

Where had such a ridiculous reaction sprung from? Chloe gave herself a mental slap and glared at Zac.

‘Goodnight, sir,’ she said icily.

‘And try to sleep.’ He spoke without lifting his shade and he sounded now like a weary parent. ‘We’ve a long way to go.’

Chloe didn’t answer and she was relieved that she would not have to speak to her boss again until morning. She pulled on her own eye mask and tried to settle comfortably, hoping that the steady vibration of the plane and the hum of its engines would soothe her.

Her hopes were not realised.

She couldn’t relax. She was too upset by her mental slip about kissing and touching her boss. Too busy delivering a good, stern lecture to herself. After all, she knew very well that Zac had asked her to accompany him on this trip precisely because he needed a female companion to whom he was not sexually attracted.

Her momentary lapse had no doubt been brought on by her over-tiredness. She knew nothing like that would happen. Zac had spent a good section of almost every working day in the past three years in her company without once trying to flirt.

Besides, she didn’t want it to happen. She was far too sensible to ever fall for her boss’s superficial good looks and charming wiles. Apart from the fact that she’d had her heart broken once and never wanted to experience that pain again, there was no way on this earth that she would allow her name to end up on the spreadsheet of his Foolish Females .

Unfortunately, her attempt to sleep only lasted about ten or fifteen minutes before she had to wriggle and fidget and try for a more comfortable position. Beside her, she heard a weary sigh. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered.

Zac lifted the eye mask again and pinched the bridge of his nose.

‘Sorry,’ Chloe said again. ‘I disturbed you, didn’t I?’

He shook his head. ‘Not really.’ He yawned. ‘I’m dog-tired, but I have a feeling I’m not going to sleep tonight.’

‘Do you normally sleep on long haul flights?’

‘Eventually.’

She wondered if he couldn’t stop thinking about his sister. Was he simply too upset to sleep? She wished she could help.

‘I don’t have any brothers or sisters,’ she said tentatively.

Zac frowned.

‘Sorry,’ she said quickly, wincing at her third apology in as many minutes. ‘I just thought you might want to talk, but I shouldn’t have—’

‘No, no, it’s OK.’ He sighed again, and lay staring into space, apparently thinking...

Chloe waited, not sure what else to say.

‘Liv was eight years younger than me,’ he said quietly. ‘When our parents died, she was only ten, so I felt more like her father at times.’ His mouth was a grim downward curve. ‘She was my responsibility.’

Chloe stared at him now as she tried to take this in. Was the poor man blaming himself for his sister’s accident? Did he feel completely responsible? ‘But you must have been very young, too,’ she said.

‘I was eighteen. An adult.’

Only just, by the skin of your teeth . ‘How awful for you to lose both your parents so young.’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed with another sigh.

Chloe didn’t like to ask, but her imagination was running wild. ‘How did it happen, Zac? Was there an accident?’

He shrugged. ‘We’ll never know for sure. My parents were sailing somewhere in Indonesia when their boat just disappeared. My father was a geologist, you see, and my mother was a marine biologist and they were mad keen on science and exploration, always on the lookout for a new discovery. I suppose you’d call them nutty professors. Eccentrics.’

So they’d just disappeared...? Poor Zac. How terrible to have his parents simply vanish, to never know if they’d been taken by pirates, or capsized in a tropical storm, or drowned when their boat struck a coral reef...

‘They—they couldn’t be still alive, living on some jungle-clad island, could they?’

Zac’s mouth tilted in a wryly crooked smile. ‘I’ve played with that fantasy, too. But it’s been seventeen years...’

Chloe couldn’t imagine how awful it must have been for him—a mere eighteen years old and forced to carry on living without answers, just with terrible possibilities.

‘Right from the start I was worried about Liv,’ he said next. ‘I couldn’t bear to see her disappear into a foster home, so I applied to be her guardian. I dropped out of uni and got myself a job, so we could live together and I could look after her.’

‘Goodness,’ Chloe said softly, hoping she didn’t sound as surprised as she felt.

Zac’s lips curled unhappily. ‘It was possibly the stupidest decision I ever made.’

‘Don’t say that. I think it was incredibly brave of you.’

She was stunned to realise that Zac had sacrificed his own goals to try to keep what was left of his family intact. All she’d ever known about his private life was the revolving door of lookalike leggy blonde girlfriends. He’d never seemed to really care about any of them beyond their sex appeal and she’d assumed the ‘care factor’ gene was missing from his DNA.