Christmas at Waratah Bay
A Christmas Around the World Novella
Marion Lennox
Christmas at Waratah Bay
Copyright © 2014 Marion Lennox
EPUB Edition
The Tule Publishing Group, LLC
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-942240-16-7
Christmas Around the World Series
‡
M
ax walked into
his neighbour’s hospital ward, and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life was seated at Harold’s bedside. The doctors were saying his old friend had only weeks to live. Here, then, was the first of the vultures.
He stood in the doorway and fought back a wash of anger so deep it was all he could do not to walk forward and smack her. He’d never met this woman, and he had no wish to. He wanted to leave.
But, Harold was pushing himself up on his pillows, reaching out to grasp his hand. “Max,” his elderly neighbor gasped. “Here’s Sarah. Sarah’s here.”
She certainly was.
The woman by Harold’s bed was stunning. She had long blonde hair, a shimmering wave, reaching almost to her waist. Her sky-blue dress was simple, sleeveless and scoop-necked, reaching to just above her knees. Her legs were long, tanned and bare. Ten beautifully painted toenails peeped from strappy sandals. They had some sort of etching on them. Gold.
All Max saw was red.
But, Harold was reaching out to him. It was impossible not to step forward and take the old man’s hand. Harold’s voice might be barely a whisper but his illness couldn’t disguise his joy. “Max, I told you Sarah’d come. I told you . . . ”
He’d told him any number of them would come. Harold had an ex-wife and three step-daughters he’d formally adopted. They’d all been demanding support for years. None of them had been near the old man in the entire time Max had known him.
He glanced at the oxygen mask and the IV lines and monitors and thought, Yep, this woman’s judgment was pretty close to perfect.
“Sarah’s come all the way from New York,” Harold whispered. “For Christmas.”
All that way? Well, why not? Harold’s remaining land was worth a small fortune. That was all he had, though. They’d bled him dry of everything else years ago.
“Glad you could make it,” he said, brusquely, not bothering to disguise his revulsion. “Harold must be glad you could drop in.”
She’d half-risen from her chair. Now she sank down again, her eyes wary.
She had the most beautiful eyes. Cornflower blue? Had he ever seen a cornflower? Nah. He’d read that somewhere, probably in one of his sister’s magazines. He grew corn for his cattle, but not once had he ever seen a cornflower.
Still . . . nice eyes, he conceded, trying to be fair. Great bone structure. The shape of her mouth was almost startlingly beautiful. Good wide mouth and nice white teeth.
They were probably whitened at her step-father’s expense.
It was hard not to be bitter. He’d been looking after the old man’s books for a couple of years now and he’d seen how these women had bled him dry. Lorissa had married Harold, a man a good twenty years her senior, and used him shamelessly to support her daughters. As the money supply dwindled she’d left for America, taking her entourage with her, but demands for support had continued. All Harold had left now was a remnant section of his farm, and now they were closing in on that as well.
He glanced at the woman again, suddenly thinking she looked familiar. Had she ever visited? Surely not—this was a woman he’d remember. Did Harold have photographs? He couldn’t remember ever seeing any.
Why did he think he’d seen her before?
“You’re Max Ramsey,” she said, warily. Should she be wary? Maybe he wasn’t bothering to hide how he was feeling.
“I am.” He released the old man’s hand. “Harold, I’ll come back later when you’re not busy.”
But, Harold was pushing himself higher and his eyes were brighter than Max had seen them for years. The old man was practically glowing.
“Max, she’s staying. Sarah’s staying. And she’s been talking to the doc and the nurses. She reckons she can work it. She says she’s taking me home for Christmas.”
*
Whoa.
He couldn’t be more surprised if he’d been kicked by one of his prize heifers. He looked at the woman again, really looked. She’d come from New York, Harold had said, and that was how she looked. A New Yorker. A model of some kind?
He thought suddenly, stupidly, of a picture his grandmother had once shown him, of a model called Jean Shrimpton at the races, the running of the Melbourne Cup. The photograph had been taken way before his time, but his grandmother had been indignant about it almost half a century later.
“She was the world’s top model, invited out from England as a showcase of style. So there we all were, in our beautiful suits and our hats and our hair done to the nines, and she just . . . arrived. In a minidress, Max, with bare legs and hardly any make-up and her hair blowing every which way. No hat, Max, can you imagine? She looked appalling.”
Max had remembered looking at the photograph and thinking she hadn’t looked appalling at all. She’d looked stunningly beautiful, but she’d also looked very aware of the effect her appearance made.
That was this woman. Aware. Her eyes spoke of intelligence. She was smiling, she was holding Harold’s hand but her eyes were talking to Max. “What of it?” her eyes were saying. “What are you going to do about it?”
“He can’t go home,” Max heard himself saying. “He needs twenty-four-hour nursing care.”
“I can give him that.” Her voice was beautifully modulated, firm but still wary.
“How the hell . . . ”
“I’ve checked with the staff . . . ”
“So you say. Harold, look at you.” He hated dulling the light in the old man’s eyes but this nonsense had to stop now. “You need oxygen. You need lifting . . . ”
“I can lift myself,” Harold said, with quiet dignity. “If Sarah can give me a hand.”
“Can I have a word with Sarah?”
“You want to say anything to Sarah, you can say it to me,” Harold retorted but just then two nurses knocked and entered.
“Sorry,” one said brightly. “We need to have a moment’s privacy with Mr. Leishman. If you two could wait outside . . . We’ll be five minutes maximum.”
“Right,” Max snapped. “But I won’t stay. I’ll drop by after milking tonight, Harold.”
“I might be home by then,” Harold told him. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. I’ll be in my own bed.”
“It might take until tomorrow to get you there,” Sarah warned. “I’ll need to get your house in order, but we’ll talk about it later.”
“I’ll talk to you about it now,” Max snapped.
“That’s fine by me,” she told him and then smiled at Harold. “It’s okay. We can do this. I won’t let Mr. Ramsey—or anyone else—mess with what we’ve decided.”
There was time for no more. The nurses ushered them out and closed the door behind them.
Max was left facing Sarah. The murderous thoughts were still there. She was beauty personified and he didn’t even want to look at her.
What she was doing was worse than cruel.
But this was nothing to do with him, he told himself harshly. He wasn’t Harold’s family. He was simply the guy who’d bought the major part of Harold’s farm. Harold’s remaining land abutted his. Now that Harold could longer run his, he’d leased Harold’s paddocks and ran stock there, so theirs was a business relationship only.
Except, he liked the old man. Plus, he respected him. Max knew a lot about farming, but Harold knew more, and the last few years had been richer because of him. He owed him a debt, and he was damned if he’d stand by and let his scavenging family move in.
What was she proposing? Taking Harold home? Didn’t she realize how close to death Harold had been before he’d finally agreed to hospital? And now . . . Moving Harold could well kill him. Did she think she’d get her inheritance sooner? He wouldn’t put it past her or her blood-sucking family.
Vultures. Vampires. From where he was standing they all looked the same, and she was the embodiment of all of them.
“I can look after him,” she said, softly, almost dangerously, and he snorted.
“How? And why? What gives you the right to barge in and get his hopes up . . . ”
“I love Harold.”
“So where have you been for the last ten years.”
She flushed, but her chin tilted a little. “Not here,” she agreed. “And maybe I should have been, but I didn’t know . . . ”
Of course she didn’t know. She hadn’t been near him.
“He’s settled here and he’s safe,” he snapped. If this woman knew the effort it had been to persuade the old man to accept help, to let himself be admitted to hospital . . . Harold was fiercely independent. He’d refused even to use a cane, walking the farm using a lawn mower as support even when his legs were so doddery it took him minutes to heave himself from a chair. That last morning Max had found him half a mile from the house. He’d been on the ground for two hours before he was found, and Max still felt sick when he thought about it. And responsible.