SHE ARRIVED BACK at her apartment to find the door ajar.
Great.
She’d been looking forward to a good session of wallowing in her own misery and now she had an intruder to deal with.
Misery turned to anger. This was her home. Her home. Someone else didn’t get to break into it and take her things. That wasn’t right.
Dragging a bottle of perfume out of her bag, she kicked open the door.
“If you’re planning on taking something that doesn’t belong to you, you picked the wrong day and the wrong woman.”
Fliss flew off the sofa and Harriet stared at her sister, the perfume in her hand.
“What are you doing here?”
It was hard to know which of them was more surprised.
Fliss stopped too. Her jaw dropped. “Your hair!”
Harriet dropped the perfume and they flung their arms round each other, laughing and talking at the same time.
Fliss was the first to pull away, but only so that she could take a closer look at Harriet.
“I would never have dared have mine cut that short. It looks fantastic. We look so different.”
We are different, Harriet thought. Always have been. But it was only now that she was starting to appreciate those differences. “I’ve stopped trying to be like you.”
“If you were about to clock me with a heavy object, you’re more like me than you think.” Fliss picked up the abandoned perfume bottle. “What were you going to do with this? Make sure your intruder smelled good before you killed him? Nothing more guaranteed to dampen the Christmas spirit than the scent of rotting corpse.”
Harriet grinned, ridiculously pleased to see her sister. “What are you doing here? Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. You’re supposed to be on your way to stay with Seth’s family.”
“I wanted to see you. When you sent me that text saying that you’d broken up with Ethan I couldn’t possibly go away and leave you alone over Christmas.”
Harriet felt a rush of warmth. Ethan’s family circle might be larger than hers, but there was nothing in the world, nothing, that came close to the sheer good fortune of having a twin.
“I appreciate you showing up here, but I’m fine.” She retrieved her suitcase from outside the apartment and pushed the door shut.
“How can you be fine? You haven’t said much, which I hate by the way, but I really had the impression you were in love with him.”
“I am in love with him.” Harriet hauled her suitcase through to the bedroom, wondering if it was ever going to get easier to say that. “But he doesn’t love me.” She glanced at her sister, who was still standing in the middle of the living room watching her.
There was anxiety in Fliss’s eyes. “You’ve not been together that long. Maybe in time he’d—”
“No.” Harriet said it firmly. “Don’t do that. Don’t say that. You’re trying to make me feel better, but kidding myself that one day he might return my feelings isn’t helpful. Trust me.”
“I get it. I do. You don’t want to be like Mum and Dad.”
Hearing the shake in her sister’s voice, Harriet discovered she wasn’t as fine as she’d thought she was. “Do you mind if we don’t talk about this?”
“Usually you like to talk about things that are bothering you.”
“I’m getting better at handling them by myself. Where is Seth?”
“He had to do some last-minute shopping. You know what men are like with gifts.” Fliss walked toward her. “You don’t have to handle everything by yourself. I may not still be living here, but I’m still your sister. Your twin. And your business partner. I’m only a phone call away.”
“I know that. And of course I’ll call if I need to.” Harriet hugged her. “But I like knowing I can handle it. It gives me a sense of security, knowing I can handle it. And speaking of the business, I’ve decided that if you want to add dog sitting into the mix for established clients we know and trust, then I’m on board with that.”
Fliss pulled away. “Seriously? Because you didn’t think you could handle that.”
“That was then and this is now. I can handle it.”
Fliss hugged her again. “I’m so proud of you. You’re strong and smart and amazing. I came here expecting you to be a mess. Finally you fell in love, and—sorry, sorry. I’m not talking about it.”
“I am a mess. Truly, I feel completely and utterly crap.”
“Never heard you say ‘crap’ before.”
“Lately I’ve said a lot of things I’ve never said before.” Like I love you. “Right now I don’t feel strong or smart. I feel really bad, but I’ll handle it. This is just another obstacle and that’s what life is all about. It’s a series of obstacles.” She pulled away from Fliss and walked across the room to switch on the Christmas tree lights. “Over Thanksgiving I decided I was going to force myself to do a challenge a day and I planned to end that at Christmas.”
“You’re not ending it?”
Harriet lit the candles she kept around the living room, thinking how much she loved her apartment. “For years I’ve been thinking ‘if only I was more like Fliss,’ or ‘if I was braver life would be easier,’ but every day brings challenges and obstacles, and you can either dodge them or deal with them. For years I dodged them. I chose to take the route with no obstacles. No way was I going to make that awkward phone call, or stand up to clients when they were rude because that made me feel uncomfortable. I dodged and I hid behind you and Daniel and thanks to you I lived a safe, protected life.”
“And then we both abandoned you.” Fliss looked stricken.
“You didn’t abandon me. You’re living your lives, which is how it should be. And you moving out is the best thing that has happened to me.”
The anxiety faded from Fliss’s eyes. “Should I be offended?”
“No. If you’d stayed I probably would have carried on taking the easy road. The one with no obstacles. But a road without obstacles is a parking lot and I don’t want to live my life in a parking lot. Am I brokenhearted about Ethan?” She stood for a moment, feeling the heaviness in her chest and the lethargy that threatened to send her to bed for a month. “Yes. In fact I am. And later, once you’ve gone, I’m going to cry until my face looks like a tomato and bake a large batch of chocolate chip cookies, which I will probably eat all by myself.”
Fliss stared at her. “You don’t look brokenhearted.”
“The damage is on the inside.”
“You’re hurting, and I can’t bear it. I want to go down to the ER and punch Dr. Hot so hard he needs to practice medicine on himself.”
“It’s not his fault.”
“What will you do?”
It was a question she hadn’t even dared ask herself. “I don’t know. What I always do. Walk dogs. Bake cookies. See my friends. Keep going and hope that one day I wake up and find it’s not hurting anymore.”
Fliss sniffed. “So you’re okay then?”
Harriet thought about Ethan. “No,” she said. “But I will be.”
She’d already decided to get a dog. It was ridiculous that she loved dogs so much and didn’t have one of her own. True, it meant that she was free to do things like dog sit at a moment’s notice and foster animals when the animal shelter needed her help, but it also meant she didn’t have a dog of her own. And she wanted one. She wanted a dog of her own.
And she was going to find a way to make that work.
SHE SPENT THE whole of Christmas Eve cooking.
The apartment was filled with the smells of baking and when she finally fell into bed, she was exhausted.
It was the first time she’d woken up to an empty apartment on Christmas Day.
For a moment she wished she’d accepted Fliss’s invitation to join them.
What was so great about spending Christmas without your family? Was she suddenly some sort of martyr? This wasn’t a challenge, it was just plain stupid.
She was wondering whether this might be the craziest thing she’d ever done, when Susan arrived. She was wearing a red sweater with black jeans and clutching an armful of parcels.
“I’m early, but I thought you might need help in the kitchen. Okay, I’m lying. I didn’t want my own company anymore. I’m driving myself insane.”
Harriet had never been more pleased to see anyone. “I’m so glad you’re here. You have no idea. Come in. How are you feeling?”
“It’s possible I will live. Thanks to your chicken soup.” Susan put her parcels under the tree and then took a closer look at Harriet. “Dammit, what the hell happened to you? The man is an idiot. I need to scan his brain.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re here on your own, you’re pale and you obviously didn’t sleep last night. Assuming that bout of insomnia wasn’t caused by excitement over Christmas, it can only be about Ethan. Where is he?”
“I don’t know. At work I assume.”
Susan scowled. “You had a week together in a log cabin in a forest. That should have been romance central. What went wrong?”
“Nothing.” Harriet returned to her cooking, hoping they could move away from this subject. “We had a wonderful week. Everything went right.”
“If everything had gone right, you wouldn’t be on your own here now.”
Harriet shook her head. “Can we talk about something else?”
“In a minute. When we’re done talking about this. Does he know you love him?”
Harriet gave a crooked smile. She didn’t bother asking how Susan had guessed. “I’m not one to hide my feelings so the answer to that is yes. But it’s not mutual.”
“If that’s true then the man doesn’t just need a scan, he needs surgery.”
“You can’t force someone to love a person.”
“Mmm.” Susan frowned. “You’ve never seen what I can achieve with a scalpel in my hand.”
Harriet winced. “Promise me you won’t say anything to him.”
“Can’t promise that.” Susan wandered into the kitchen. “Any of that delicious coffee on offer?”
Harriet made her a coffee and handed her a tin. “Chocolate chip cookie?”
“Are you sure you can spare one?” Susan took the lid off the tin. “Holy smokes. How many people are coming today? The entire population of Manhattan?”
“Just you and Glenys.”
Susan stared into the tin. “So by a rough calculation, I reckon that’s about four thousand cookies each. What happened?”
“I may have gotten a little carried away yesterday. Baking cheers me up.”
“Well, don’t apologize for that.” Susan took two cookies out of the tin. “I’m here for you. Anything you need, even if it requires me to consume my body weight in sugar.”
Harriet managed a laugh but she had no idea how. Her whole body felt heavy. She was pretending she was coping well but the truth was she felt awful. Lethargic. Sad. And it hadn’t even been forty-eight hours yet. “Tell me about you. Have you been in much pain?”
“No.” The shadows under Susan’s eyes told a different story. “They think I should be back at work mid-January. I’m starting physical therapy next week.”
Glenys arrived with Harvey, having taken a cab the few blocks from her apartment. She and Susan immediately bonded and Harvey made himself at home in Harriet’s apartment.
They swapped gifts, and Harriet served lunch and tried not to think about Ethan and what he was doing. Glenys and Susan were good company and Harriet was relieved that they were there.
“One more game of Scrabble,” she announced, a few hours later. “Festive Scrabble this time. Only words relating to the holidays are allowed. And it’s only fair to warn you about my competitive streak and my killer instinct.”
“Killer instinct? You?” Glenys glanced at Susan, who shook her head quickly.
“You go, girl.”
They were almost at the end of the game when there was a knock on the door.
“ALCOHOL is not a Christmas word.” Glenys waggled her finger. “It doesn’t count.”
“Try working in the ER on Christmas Day. Alcohol is definitely a Christmas word. It’s your turn, Harriet,” Susan said. “I’ll get the door.” She walked to the door and pulled it open while Harriet made a word out of her own letters.
“FESTIVE.” She put the letters down carefully. “And on a triple word score. Take that! You’ll never catch me now. You might as well surrender.”
Realizing that Susan wasn’t responding in her usual way—in fact she wasn’t responding at all—Harriet glanced across to the door. “Who is it?”
“It’s Santa,” Susan said faintly.
“Very funny.”
“He has a gift for you.”
“If this is an elaborate trick to distract me so that you can switch my letters when I’m not looking, it’s too late. I’ve already won.” Harriet took a last look at the board before going to the door. “I assume it’s a charity thing—”
She stared at the tall, broad-shouldered Santa standing in her doorway. “Ethan? What are you—” She swallowed. “Why are you dressed as Santa?” And then she realized why, and what it meant, and her heart swelled in her chest. “You did it. You agreed to dress as Santa for the kids. Why? What changed your mind?”
“Someone once told me that they always do the one thing they don’t want to do. I thought it sounded like a good idea.”
“So this is Challenge Ethan?”
“Maybe. And I kept the costume on, because no one can turn away Santa, right?”
“Manipulative,” Susan muttered and Ethan reached into the sack he was carrying and handed her a gift.
“This seems to have your name on it.”
“Bribery is not going to work.” But Susan took the gift from his hands. “Or maybe it will. Possibly.”
Harriet was too busy thinking through the implications. He’d agreed to be Santa. Whatever part of him had thought he was too cynical to be Santa, he’d put it aside. Buried it. “Were they thrilled? Or were they too sick to be happy?” She hated thinking about the kids in hospital on Christmas Day. But at least they’d had a visit from Santa.
“They were all pretty happy to see me, you were right about that.”
“Do you want to come in?” Her mind was racing with a thousand questions. Why are you here? How have you been?
He stepped inside and peeled off his beard. “Ouch.”
Susan covered her eyes. “Carry on like this and you’ll have me thinking that Santa isn’t real.”
“He’s real, but right now he’s overheated.” He smiled at Glenys. “I’m interrupting your game. I apologize.”
Without the beard, Harriet was able to take a closer look at him and realized he looked exhausted. As if he hadn’t slept in days.
“Don’t apologize. Harriet just thrashed us both and Susan and I were about to leave, weren’t we, Susan?” Glenys was on her feet and whistling for Harvey.
“I was about to leave, but now I think it might be more entertaining to stay.” Susan sent Ethan a look. “You’d better be about to say something worth hearing.”
“I’m not going to be saying anything while you’re standing there.”
Susan grumbled and picked up her coat. “Make her cry and I’ll hunt you down and fillet you.”
“I’ve missed you at work. No one abuses me the way you do. Please come back soon.”
Susan hesitated and then stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I plan to.”
Glenys took Susan’s arm. “Share a cab, Doctor?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Wait. You’re both leaving?” Harriet felt a lurch of anxiety. She had no idea why Ethan was here, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to be left alone.
“Thank you for a wonderful Christmas.” Susan hugged her and so did Glenys.
“Best Christmas ever, although I may never forgive you for getting FESTIVE on a triple word score.” They left, and suddenly she was alone with Ethan.
She wondered how it was, after all the intimacies they’d shared, she could feel awkward and uncomfortable being in the same room as him. “Have you eaten? Can I fetch you something?” She wanted to ask why he was so tired, but knew she shouldn’t be asking questions that personal.
“Later. First there are things I need to say to you.” He took her hands and pulled her against him. “That night in the cabin when you told me you loved me, you scared me.”
“I know. You felt a responsibility to love me back, but—”
“I do love you back, and it has nothing to do with responsibility.”
She stared at him, wondering if she’d heard him correctly. “But you said—”
“I know what I said and when I said it, I believed it. When it comes to relationships, you’ve set the bar high. I was afraid I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be.”
“Oh, Ethan—” Her eyes filled. “I’ve only ever wanted you to be who you already are. I don’t want a fake version of you. I want you.”
“I know. I’ve had time to think about that, and other things. Like how much I love you.”
“Really? You were sure that you didn’t have those feelings.” She felt shaky and unsteady. “How do you know?”
“Over the years I’ve learned to switch off my emotions. It’s almost become easy for me. I thought that was why my marriage didn’t work. I thought that was why I couldn’t give any relationship what it needed. When you ended it, I told myself I’d switch off what I was feeling, same as I always have. But it didn’t happen. That was when I realized that what we have is nothing like any relationship I’ve had before. My feelings are nothing like I’ve ever experienced before.”
“Ethan—”
“What I feel for you is too powerful to be buried. And it’s certainly too powerful to be ignored. I know, because I tried.”
She lifted her hand and touched his cheek. “Is that why you look so awful?”
“Turns out I don’t sleep well when you’re not in my life.” He cupped her face in his hands. “You’re not the sort of person who switches love on and off, so I’m assuming I’m not too late?”
She stared into his eyes, hardly able to believe this was real.
“Of course not. I love you.”
He groaned and pulled her against him. “I love you too. I want to be your forever family, or whatever it is you call it when you find permanent homes for those animals you foster.”
Forever family.
Merry Christmas, Harriet.
Her throat thickened and she leaned her head against his chest. “I want that too.”
“Are you sure? You said you knew my strengths and weaknesses. I want to make sure that you do, because I’m not easy to live with. There will be days when I’m so focused on working I’ll forget to call home.”
She lifted her head and smiled. “I already know that. I know you. But while we’re confessing all, you should probably know that I intend to get a dog. Are you okay with that?”
“Funny you should say that,” he said, his tone conversational, “because my Christmas gift to you is going to be a puppy but I thought that, given you’re the dog expert, you’d prefer to choose it yourself.”
“We’ll do it together.” She slid her arms round his neck. “We’ll go to the shelter and find a dog that needs a home.”
He kissed her and it was at least five minutes before she was able to speak again.
“I’m glad you decided to be Santa.”
“You do something you find hard every day. I figured that the least I could do was give this a try. It worked, I think.” He looked pleased with himself. “I was a hit with the kids.”
“I never doubted you would be.”
“And it occurs to me that I had something to give all of them, but nothing to give you.” He smoothed his hand over her hair. Kissed her mouth. “I came rushing over here because I couldn’t wait another moment to talk to you. I don’t have a ring. I don’t have anything. All I brought is the promise of a puppy. This is not the romantic proposal you deserve.”
“Are you kidding?” She almost choked on the words. “You’re giving me love. That’s the best gift of all.”
“Are you sure?”
“If you know me as well as I think you do, then you know I’m sure.” Her heart felt full. “Ethan, you brought yourself. The only thing that matters is that you’re here. That you came. That you love me.”
He wrapped her tightly in his arms. “So what’s the next challenge?”
She leaned her head against his chest, breathing him in, feeling her future opening up like a bright shining path. There would be obstacles at some point, she knew that. But she also knew she’d deal with them. “I don’t know what’s next. But what I do know is that when you love someone, and they love you back, everything seems like less of a challenge.” And she knew that wherever life took them, they were going there together.
* * * * *