Meredith Webber - Orphan Under the Christmas Tree

Tom came forward and turned on a bedside light, using a button to dim it.

‘All mod cons in this place,’ he said, then he touched the little boy on the head and hesitated for a few seconds before following Lauren out of the room.

‘Your bedroom is this way,’ he said, pushing open the next door. ‘There’s a bathroom just beyond it, towels in a cabinet behind the door. Do you need anything else? Would you like a drink of some kind?’

Lauren shook her head, then common sense dictated she should ask.

‘I don’t suppose you’d have a blow-up mattress or a comfortable lounger? I’d like to sleep beside him in case he wakes up in the night and doesn’t know where he is.’

Tom smiled at her.

‘Great minds,’ he said. ‘I was intending to do just that, but if you’re sure then it would be better for you to do it as he doesn’t really know me except as someone who causes him pain when he lands in the ER after one of his wilder pranks. I do have a blow-up mattress from far-off camping days. I’ll get it.’

He was about to walk away, but Lauren caught his arm so he turned back to her.

‘Why?’ she asked, adding, when she saw the puzzled expression on his face, ‘Why were you thinking of staying with him?’

Tom’s smile was gone, his face now pale and grim, although it would be. It was well after midnight and he must be exhausted.

‘I was Bobby once,’ he said softly, then he slipped his arm away from her fingers and disappeared back along the passage and into what must be the front bedroom.

His bedroom!

I was Bobby once?

What did he mean?

And why was it suddenly very important to Lauren that she find out? Find out all she could about the enigmatic man she’d thought she knew …

Why had he said that?

Lauren was a psychologist—she’d want an explanation for a statement like that.

But would she ask?

Lauren, his friend, would have, but this Lauren was different.

Because he’d seen vulnerability in her for the first time in the eighteen months he’d known her?

Because he felt, not exactly proud, but somehow pleased that she’d trusted him enough to show that vulnerability?

So he’d shared a bit of his?

Oh, please! Enough with the psychological delving.

He reached up on top of his wardrobe for his old backpack, assuming his blow-up mattress would still be shoved inside or strapped to it. He hoped the rubberised material hadn’t rotted. If it had, Lauren was in for an uncomfortable night. Perhaps the reclining lounge chair would be more comfortable for her, although they would probably wake Bobby trying to manoeuvre it into the bedroom, and would it fit?

He tried very hard to concentrate on these nice trivial matters, but in his head the image of a little boy, younger than Bobby by a couple of years, tucked into a strange bed in a strange room—the first of a series of strange beds in strange rooms …

‘Tom? Can I help?’

Lauren was in the doorway and it was obvious he’d dithered for so long she’d had time to have a shower for her hair clung in damp tendrils to her neck, and she was wearing what must be one of the ugliest nightdresses ever created. A vague purple colour, faded from much washing, it had something he assumed were bunches of flowers printed all over it, and it hung, shapeless as a deflated balloon, from her shoulders.

‘Fetching, isn’t it?’ she said, smiling at the thoughts she’d obviously guessed he was having. ‘Maybe the hospital insists on the design—it’d work better than an old-fashioned chastity belt for randy staffers.’

Though not for him, Tom discovered. Standing there in his bedroom door, freshly showered, totally exhausted but still so temptingly beautiful, his body would probably have reacted if she’d been wearing a suit of armour.

‘You’d look good in a wheat sack,’ he told her, hefting the whole backpack down from the top of the wardrobe and turning his attention to finding the mattress, shaking his head in frustration when it failed to materialise.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m so tired I could sleep on a barbed-wire fence. It’s a warm night so if you wouldn’t mind lending me that puffy-looking duvet you have on your bed I can fold it, probably in three—is that a king-size bed?—and it will be fine.’

Looking at the bed was a mistake. He immediately pictured Lauren in it. And it was a king-size bed but right now he didn’t want to think about why he used a bed that size, let alone explain it.

‘Okay,’ he said, realising that the sooner he got Lauren tucked away in Bobby’s bedroom the sooner he could sort through the craziness inside his head.

Could he put it all down to seeing Bobby in that neatly made single bed?

Of course he couldn’t. It had started back with Lauren’s groan, and the strange sensation of … satisfaction? … he’d felt when she’d asked him to stand by her.

Not to mention his determination to find out more about the vulnerability he’d glimpsed in the woman he’d thought was so together.

He’d stalled again, standing in the bedroom, only vaguely aware of Lauren walking past him and hefting the duvet from his bed. He reached out to take it from her, but as he touched her arm she dropped it, and stepped over it so she was close enough to hug.

For him to hug her, although it didn’t happen that way.

It was Lauren who moved closer, Lauren who put her arms around him, slipping her hands beneath his shoulders so she could reach around his body, then she hugged him tightly to her, her head pressed against his chest, a whispered ‘Thank you for being there for me tonight’ rising up into his ears.

Then, just as he was certain she’d feel his body’s unacceptable reaction to the embrace, she pulled away, picked up the duvet from the floor, and left the room.

LAUREN shouldn’t have hugged him, she knew. Of course she shouldn’t, especially not without asking, but his words had sounded so bleak and there’d been such sadness lingering in his eyes as she’d stood at the bedroom door that she’d been unable to resist.

The problem was that now, lying on his folded duvet, smelling the man that had permeated it, she could still feel the tremors of—what, attraction?—that hugging him had startled into life. Tremors she hadn’t felt in years but still recognised for what they were—definitely attraction!

In truth, she had always been attracted to Tom—what woman wouldn’t be?—which was why she’d never accepted any of the invitations he’d offered when he’d first arrived in town. Attraction led down pathways she didn’t want to follow. Attraction led to trouble …

And disappointment.

Even disgust from one man she’d gone out with—a man who’d called her names that shamed her even now to think about, a man who had been disgusted when she’d tried to explain it was terror that had stopped her, not a desire to tease and walk away, definitely not a wish to anger him in any way …

Go to sleep, she told herself, trying to shut down her mind, knowing she’d need to be ready for anything the following day. Above her on the bed, Bobby stirred, and Lauren reached up to touch his arm, talking quietly to him, telling him she was there and she’d look after him, although she knew he’d probably moved in his sleep and couldn’t hear her words.

It was enough of a reminder of her responsibility to Bobby that it enabled her, at last, to stop thinking about tremors of attraction, and Tom, and the past, and drift into a deep sleep.

They were both still sleeping when Tom looked into the bedroom at eight the following morning. The revolting nightdress had ridden up so he could see Lauren’s long, slim, tanned legs curled into the folds of his faded navy duvet.