Authors: Glenys O'Connell
Finally left alone, they had talked for hours, it seemed, before Dan finally poked his head around the door and asked Jed if he had no home to go to, then nodded pointedly towards the clock.
Anna saw him out, and they’d stood on the front porch, kissing and holding each other, clinging as if there was no tomorrow. He’d known then that the fire Anna had kindled in him also blazed in her, and he groaned softly at the memory of how he’d desired her: A desire that had been firmly slapped down when the porch light suddenly came on and flooded their intimacy with light, and Sofia, swathed in a thick flannel robe and with oily face cream glistening on her skin, had scowled out at them as if they were a couple of naughty teenagers.
So Jed had booked himself into a lonely hotel room, where a compassionate desk clerk had broken house rules by supplying him with a couple of beers and a ham sandwich. He’d spent the rest of the night deep in thought, tormented by visions of Anna warm in her bed. What did she wear for sleep? he wondered, and tortured himself anew with thoughts of slipping a sexy hardly-there, lacy nightdress from her shoulders…..
He’d given up expecting to fall in love; had come to the conclusion he was just not going to be blessed that way. Sure, there’d been plenty of women in his life and several times he’d thought perhaps he’d hit the jackpot. But it never seemed to take hold, and he’d moved on.
Then he met Anna and it was like being struck by lightning, only in a good way.
Strange that I’ve known her only days and yet I’m sure; I’ve known Felicity since I was a kid but there was never the same electricity between us.
His mind drifted back to that store front display he’d looked at with Anna. Her plaintive question about whether families were ever like those depicted in the tableau, haunted him. The scene had awakened in him the lonely longing for something he no longer expected to find.
How easy it had been to insert himself and Anna in that scenario! He was still reeling from the stupendous realization that he wanted to give Anna a Christmas just like that, to hold their
child and watch the joy in her eyes as they decorated the tree together. He wanted to give her - his child…
As the sun rose higher in the sky, Jed Walker, one of New York’s most eligible confirmed bachelors, grabbed his jacket and raced out to where his vehicle stood covered in the several inches of snow that had fallen overnight.
If he left now, there would still be time.
He wasn’t coming back.
She’d been a fool to believe him when he said he’d return for her. She simply wasn’t fated to be loved by someone like Jed Walker. She sighed a sigh that rose from the very depths of her heart as she let the lace curtain fall back over the window and turned once more to the room.
“
You’ve peeked out of that window a hundred times; a watched kettle never boils, you know,” Sofia said crisply as she came into the room carrying a large battered box of Christmas decorations. “Come now, make yourself useful. Remember how we always used to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve and sing carols?”
Sofia’s face fell when Anna simply shrugged. What did she care about Christmas? Over the past few years it had just been an inconvenience, an interruption in her routine as the shops filled with crowds and emptied of goods, friends went home for the holidays and she stayed in lonely splendor in her apartment on the university grounds. Louis had never been big into Christmas and he’d been dismissive of Anna’s few attempts to celebrate the season.
And he’d always gone home alone. “The parents won’t understand about us,” he told her. “They think it’s sinful for people to live together before marriage.” So Anna had been left to celebrate Christmas in her own way, usually with a bottle of wine and a stack of new books. Each Christmas morning she’d listened alone, as the bells rang out across the city of Leeds, and tears of longing for something she couldn’t identify had raced down her cheeks.
It looked like she would soon be going back to the years of lonely Christmases; to the years of lying in a lonely bed and dreaming of Jed’s touch, his kisses….and so she might as well celebrate this Christmas, one last time with the Adams.
Sofia’s smile was radiant as Anna stood and began to take the decorations out of the box. At the same moment, Dan huffed his way into the room, dragging with him a freshly cut tree and filling the room with the heady scent of evergreens and country air.
Seeing the two of them setting out the decorations, Dan grinned widely and winked at Sofia. Anna was sure the older woman blushed as she coyly smiled back at her husband. How many years had these two been together, and yet Sofia’s cheeks could still color charmingly when her husband flirted with her?
“Do you think there’s any such thing as love at first sight?” The words were out before she could stop them, and it was Anna’s turn to blush. She quickly picked up a set of colored Christmas lights and bent her head to the task of untangling them.
When she looked up her foster parents were beaming at each other.
“I knew the moment I saw Sofia that I had to have her in my life,” Dan said. “She wasn’t the most beautiful girl I’d ever met, but there was something about her….something special.”
Sofia flicked her hand at him teasingly. “What, not the most beautiful, you say?” she tried to scowl at him but a smile broke through. “Did we ever tell you how we met, Anna?”
Anna shook her head. She couldn’t imagine, in years gone by that she would have been interested in her foster parents’ history. Now she found herself really wanting to know how they had come together and made a marriage that lasted all these years.
“I was only sixteen, and working in the kitchens of a café near the American embassy in Moscow. It was a good job – it didn’t pay very well, but they let the staff eat any leftover food. My family was very poor, so when I had food from the café, I could send more of the pittance I earned home to them. I hated the city – I was a country girl and at night I would weep for my family’s cottage.”
She fell silent, momentarily lost in thought and Dan took up the story. “I was in the armed forces, and was sent to Moscow as part of the security detail for our embassy there. I would go out for a sandwich to a little café nearby, and there I met the woman who changed my life.
“It took a lot of trying, but finally she agreed to go out with me. We went to see a movie, and I walked her home. On our third date, she let me kiss her – and I was dizzy with the joy of it.”
Sofia continued. “It was like something out of one of the folk stories my mother used to tell me when I was a child; it took me a while to believe it was really happening – that the handsome American really did care about me. And then I never cried for my parents’ cottage ever again.
“So, in answer to your question, little Anna - yes, there is such a thing as love at first sight. But you must be brave enough to grasp it with both hands and hold on tight, because sometimes it grabs you when you least expect it.”
* * *
Jed cursed softly as he rushed from the Walker Media building, or tried to. It seemed that every couple of yards someone stopped him to chat, to question the holiday arrangements, or simply wish him a merry Christmas.
Added to that, the programming meeting had gone on twice as long as usual – the few staff present were enjoying the extra relaxation of the holiday. Like most media companies, Walker operated a skeleton staff during holidays like Christmas, so the employees present at the meeting were mostly young and footloose; they enjoyed passing the time joshing around and it had taken a supreme effort on his part to get them to concentrate on business so that he could get the hell out of there.
And as if things weren’t bad enough, the weather seemed to be turning against him. From flurries of light snow over the past 24 hours, the heavens had opened and were determined to supply all those Christmas merrymakers with a traditional White Christmas. Lovely to look at, but hell to travel in.
Then his cell beeped and he pressed the listen buttons as he waited in traffic, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Jed – where are you? We’re getting ready for church and you know I expect you to join us,” his mother said, disapproval dripping in her tone.
He slapped his hand against his forehead. Family was important to him, and holiday traditions provided the opportunity for family get togethers so that he could catch up with the latest goings-on among his siblings and cousins.
But not tonight! With a shiver of guilt, he remembered this was the one night of the year when his mother insisted he be home and accompany her, his father and his grandmother to church.
And this was the one night of this year when he simply couldn’t do it. He hated the disappointment in her voice when he told her he was tied up in a meeting and now late for another appointment.
“Jed Walker, you work too hard. It’s not healthy – doing business on Christmas Eve, for heaven’s sake! You cancel your appointment, and get yourself home.”
So he was forced to say the magic words. “Mom, it’s not business. I need to see someone special – and I hope she’s waiting for me.”
“Someone special? A girl? Why didn’t you say so? She must be special indeed if you’re missing Christmas with us. When do we get to meet her?”
“Soon, if everything works out.”
“So why are you hanging around chatting on the telephone? Go and work things out with this special lady.” His mother hung up leaving Jed relieved that she wasn’t upset, and worried that he’d told her too much. If things didn’t work out….
But when he arrived in Knotting Grove, all the lights in the Adams house were out. He was shocked to see it was after midnight and, short of climbing down the chimney, he couldn’t see any way of getting to see Anna without causing offence to her foster parents.
* * *
She had spent the evening quietly with Sofia and Dan, admiring the decorated tree, eating sausage rolls and Christmas shortbread, and drinking some of Sofia’s homemade dandelion wine.
She didn’t have a cell number for Jed, and when she called the hotel they told her he’d checked out early that morning. “Seemed in an awful hurry, too,” the desk clerk told her.
With a heavy heart she tried telephoning the television station. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Walker isn’t here right now but I can take a message,” the receptionist chirped.
“Can you give me his number so I can call him directly?” Anna asked, hoping the desperation didn’t show in her voice.
“I’m sorry, it’s company policy. We’re not allowed to give out telephone numbers. I can pass a message on to Mr. Walker, though.”
“No, don’t bother. I’ll catch him later.”
Would she catch him? Anna doubted it very much. She downed another glass of dandelion wine and tried to ignore the meaningful glances which passed between Sofia and Dan.
She woke up the next morning heavy headed, heavy hearted and miserable. Dragging herself into the shower, she told herself she didn’t really care about Jed; that all that love at first
sight stuff was nonsense, little more than eager hormones. And hadn’t he been really rude to her on more than one occasion? Obviously, he didn’t really have feelings for her.
Then she remembered falling asleep in his arms after he’d taken her to the hospital, and the fiery passion that had almost enveloped them as they’d stood on the Adams doorstep in the cold, crisp night, heated through by the physical desire that flamed within them.
The shower did little to improve her mood and when Sofia banged on her door at 6 am, she quailed at the thought that the woman might want her to go to the early church service with her and Dan. “Oh, dear God – kill me now,” she wailed inwardly as she opened her bedroom door.
“Come on, dear, get up. It’s Christmas morning and we have something special for you. Hurry up and get dressed.” Sofia was beaming, and Anna was left nervously wondering what her foster mother was up to.
She reluctantly pulled on tattered jeans that she’d had when she was fifteen, and an old Knotting Grove High School sweatshirt. She dragged a brush through the tangled strawberry blonde mane that was still wet from the shower, all the while feeling horrible that the Adams had obviously made an attempt to make Christmas enjoyable; they’d even bought her a present. And she hadn’t thought to bring anything for them.
The day just kept getting worse.
She entered the living room on dragging feet, hoping that the ‘something special’ was just a pair of the crocheted slippers Sofia made – but she came to a sudden stop just inside the door.
Jed Walker stood in the middle of the room. He was resplendent in a three piece suit, smooth shaven and perfectly turned out – except for that lock of hair that always fell across his forehead. Anna’s fingers itched to smooth it away from his brow, but she couldn’t move, frozen
in place by the worried look on his face. Then she remembered the state she was in – ill-dressed, no make up, and her hair wet and frizzy from lacking a blow dry.
“What do you want?” she asked, not meaning to sound as snappish as the words came out. His face became even more serious.
“It’s Christmas, Anna.”
“I know that. You think I’m dumb or something?”
Dark color swept up from Jed’s neck and over his cheek bones. “I know it’s really early, but I just had to see you. I couldn’t wait another minute – and Mr. and Mrs. Adams said it was okay when I called them.”