“Can I get you anything else?” Sinead has been fussing over me since Emmett brought me home, and I feel guilty because it’s Christmas Day, and she should be opening gifts and checking the turkey in the oven instead of worrying about me.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
I’m on the huge squashy sofa in the living room snuggled under a fluffy blanket. I’ve drunk two mugs of hot chocolate and eaten an entire tub of shortbread biscuits, and although I still can’t feel my toes, I’ve stopped shivering.
“When are we eating breakfast?” one of the twins asks.
“We’re skipping breakfast today,” Sinead says. “But you can come and help me make pigs in blankets, and I’m sure Uncle Patrick will let you have some chocolate.”
The boys follow their auntie to the kitchen leaving me and Emmett alone in the living room with the twinkling fairy lights and the aroma of roast turkey wafting through the doorway.
He sits on the end of the sofa and rests his elbows on his thighs, deliberately avoiding eye contact.
“I feel so bad for ruining everyone’s day,” I say. “Is it my fault no one ate breakfast?”
He looks at me then, and his expression seems softer somehow, as if I’m viewing him through a rose-tinted lens. “We always eat too much food on Christmas Day. It’ll save till tomorrow.”
Tears well in my eyes. I screwed up their Christmas, and everyone is still being nice to me. It’s so much more than I deserve, and I know that I owe them an explanation.
“How are you feeling now?” Emmett finally looks at me.
“Aside from guilty?” He nods. “Tired. I feel like someone drained my blood and replaced it with some kind of liquid that never heats up.” I swallow hard and hide behind my third hot chocolate. “How can I make it up to your family?”
His eyes dart to my fingers. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out Granny Mary’s engagement ring. “You can start by putting this back on before anyone notices it’s missing.”
My tears start flowing. “I can’t, Emmett. It isn’t right.”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that, eh?” He kneels on the floor by the sofa, takes my hand, and slides the ring onto my finger.
It’s so different to his first proposal, the fake one on the roof of his office building, that I start choking on the sweet creamy liquid. Two proposals, and I’m still not getting married.
He takes the cup from my hand and sets it down on the coffee table. “I’m sorry, Mary.”
There goes my heart again…
“Sorry for what?”
“For … everything.”
I want more than this. My heart is going thump-thump inside my chest, waiting for him to take back what he said yesterday, when I already know that he hasn’t changed his mind. He gave me back the ring to keep his granny happy, not because he has suddenly decided that he can’t live without me.
Get real, Mary, for chrissakes.
“It’s fine.”
It’s a million miles from being fucking fine, but I won’t beg him to like me.
“My parents will want to know what happened. I’ll tell them that we had a fight, I said some terrible things, and you didn’t want to spoil their Christmas.”
I blink back tears. He’s only sorry that I ran away and made life more difficult for everyone. I should’ve just stayed here, played the part of the doting fiancée, ate all their food, drank their champagne, and flashed Granny Mary’s engagement ring all over the place. Perhaps Emmett would’ve been happy then.
“Do you think they’ll believe you?”
“I’ll make sure they do. I’ll tell them it was all me, Mary.”
I want to say that it was all him, but I don’t have the energy.
An image of the man at the bus shelter pops into my head. Was he trying to help? I was too frightened to read the situation, but Emmett threatened to chop his fingers off if he touched me again anyway. A shudder travels down my spine. I’m grateful to be safe and warm, but his reaction was a tad extreme.
I sense that Emmett is about to join his family in the kitchen, but there’s one more thing I need to say first. “You called me your woman. You said: stay away from me and my woman.”
I watch him closely as a lopsided smile appears on his face. “It was a figure of speech, Mary. I was angry.” He stands up. “I’m going to see if Mom needs any help, and then I’ll be back. Don’t move, okay?”
“Okay.”
I follow him with my eyes as he crosses the room. He stops in the doorway and turns around to face me, the same smile still playing on his lips. “No one has ever been more my woman than you, Mary Chrysler.”
He leaves before I can say a word.
“I want to hand out the presents.”
“No, it’s my job.”
“Boys, you can both do it.” Clare must be so used to the twins’ constant bickering that it no longer fazes her. Perhaps she doesn’t even hear it, tuning it out like she can somehow turn down their volume.
Sinead places a warm hand on my arm. “I’m so sorry we didn’t get you anything, Mary. Blame my son for not warning us that you were coming.”
I smile. “It doesn’t matter. Christmas isn’t about gifts.”
“Yes, it is.” Joseph or Jamie—I can’t tell them apart—frowns at me like I just grew a second head.
Everyone laughs, and I’m glad the attention isn’t on me. I’ve taken up enough of their time today; I just want to melt into the background and watch them from afar.
Their piles of gifts grow, the boys excitedly dumping presents onto people’s laps as they dip back and forth beneath the tree until every gift has found an owner. Then they sit down and tear the paper off two identical gifts. Scooters.
“Whoa!” They both say in unison. “Can we try them out?”
“Not in here.” Sinead stops them from jumping up and racing around the room. “You can take them outside when it stops snowing.”
They go around the room, taking turns to open a gift so that everyone gets to see what they’ve got. Sinead unwraps her gift from Emmett: A Ted Baker bathrobe and a spa weekend-for-two at Dromoland Castle.
“Aw, you sweetie.” Sinead blows him a kiss from across the room. “Did Sonia choose this?”
I can’t believe she said this, but Emmett only hangs his head in mock-shame. “You got me, Mom. I’ve been busy lately.”
“Lucky your mother loves you, Emmett.” Patrick shakes his head but doesn’t seem surprised by his son’s confession. His gift from his son is an antique gold cribbage board. I don’t understand the game, but tears well in Patrick’s eyes as he holds the board up for everyone to see.
Fianna goes next. Her gift is a trouser suit from Prada on Fifth Avenue. Her eyes light up when she sees the emerald-green suit complete with gold accessories, and she throws her arms around Emmett’s neck, squeezing him tightly.
I envy her this natural reaction, this closeness to her cousin, the effortless abandon with which she hugged him. When she looks at Emmett, she sees the cousin she grew up with, the businessman who lives in New York and flies home for special occasions, the guy who tolerates Christmas for his family’s sake.
Whereas when I look at him… When I look at him, I see someone who makes my heart skip around like a child who ate too many sweeties, and I don’t even know when or how this happened. But so much has changed since we came to Ireland that I can barely even recall how badly I wanted to hurt him for drugging me and bringing me here.
I sit in my bubble on the sofa, part of the festivities but outside of it at the same time. I don’t mind. It gives me a chance to watch Emmett unnoticed. He’s aloof, detached from the family even though they seem oblivious. Sure, he smiles and laughs in all the right places, he appreciates his gifts, he even helps the twins open a Monster Truck Lego set and starts building with them. But his heart isn’t in it.
Yes, that’s it. His heart is elsewhere.
Is it another woman? Is that why he keeps reminding me that this isn’t real? Every time he claims to be making business calls, is he really speaking to his girlfriend back in New York? The thought makes me feel queasy, and my pulse starts racing.
It would explain his complete three-sixty on the way back from the stream yesterday. I’m such an idiot. Why did I fall for the charm when I already knew about his reputation as a player? I made the classic mistake of thinking I could change the womanizer, and now I realize how stupid that was.
So, why did he say what he said earlier? “No one has ever been more my woman than you, Mary Chrysler.”
Like, what does this even mean?
I hear my name mentioned and am jolted back to reality. What did I miss?
Everyone is staring at Emmett like they’re waiting for him to perform a magic trick or reveal the punchline to a joke.
Fianna, realizing that I’m clueless, says, “I just asked Emmett what he bought you for Christmas, Mary.”
Am I imagining it, or does Fianna know more than she should? She always seems to ask the right questions, the kind of questions that put us on the spot.
I think quickly. “We said that we weren’t buying gifts for each other. We have a wedding to plan.” I smile and shrug, praying that they all buy it as an excuse. I mean, getting married isn’t cheap, but then of course, I’m forgetting that Emmett O’Hara is a billionaire playboy businessman.
Fuck!
“Actually, I do have a gift for Mary.” Emmett stands, and heat floods my cheeks.
He smiles at me as he navigates his way across the room avoiding unwrapped gifts and the mountain of scrunched up paper in the middle. What is going on here? Is he going to give me the gift he bought for his real girlfriend back in New York? Is this another piece of jewelry that I’ll have to hand back before we leave?
I chew my bottom lip and avoid meeting anyone’s eyes.
I don’t want someone else’s gift. I thought Emmett came and found me this morning and brought me back here because he was worried about me, and now he’s going to go and ruin everything again by giving me a present that doesn’t belong to me.
He comes back into the room, and I hardly dare raise my eyes to see what he’s holding. Come on, Mary, pull yourself together and act! Act surprised and pleased like your life depends on it. Which maybe it does.
I was expecting a small jewelry box wrapped up with a neat red bow, but Emmett is holding what looks like a painting in his hands.
“Sorry, I haven’t wrapped it, Mary.” He shrugs. “I hope it will make up for the stupid things I said to you yesterday.”
Okay, is this for real, or is he still covering for my failed runaway attempt in the night?
He turns the painting around, and my heart literally starts trying to hammer its way out of my ribcage. It’s me. It’s a head-and-shoulders painting of me, wearing the red dress Fianna loaned to me the night we arrived, my hair loose and tumbling over my shoulders.
“I…” I think I’m supposed to say something, but my brain isn’t cooperating.
I study the picture. Emmett has somehow made me look beautiful but in a shy, understated way. I’m smiling out of the canvas as if I’m posing in front of a camera, and I have no idea how he captured me so exquisitely when he barely seems to look at me.
“What do you think?” He’s watching me, gauging my reaction, waiting for me to speak.
“How…? I mean, when did you paint this?”
“At night, and when you thought that I was in town sorting out some business stuff.”
He almost sounds quite humble, and I tear my eyes away from the portrait to look at him. Emmett O’Hara is hot. I mean, it’s no surprise that he has a reputation for being a player. But right now, standing there with a painting of me in his hands, he looks like a regular guy trying to impress a girl. He looks almost vulnerable.
On impulse, I jump up from the sofa, run across the room, and throw my arms around his neck, almost bowling him over. “I love it. No one has ever given me a present like this before.”
“Aw, she’s done it again,” Sinead’s voice reaches us from her spot on the other sofa.
“Quick, guys,” Clare says. “Where are the tissues?”
Christmas dinner is a noisy, raucous, fun-filled affair. Patrick carves the turkey at the table; Emmett keeps the sparkling wine flowing; and we all wear paper crowns while telling corny jokes pulled from Christmas crackers.
For a while, I forget about how I came to be there. I forget about the murder on the rooftop, Emmett fucking me by the stream, our fake engagement, and the thought of flying back to New York. Granny Mary’s ring feels like it belongs on my finger, and I allow myself to revel in being part of this huge welcoming family.
When we’re all stuffed with turkey, roasted potatoes, pigs in blankets, and more vegetables than I can count, followed by homemade Christmas pudding and brandy butter, Patrick announces a toast to the future Mr. and Mrs. Emmett O’Hara.
My pulse races. I still don’t know how Emmett is going to react, even after seeing the portrait. I mean, he must have spent some time studying me to have captured the likeness the way he did but studying someone and having feelings for them are two entirely separate things, and I don’t even know why I’m still clinging to that glimmer of hope that what we did meant something to him.
So, my heart lets me down again when Emmett leans closer and kisses me on the lips while one of the twins holds a sprig of mistletoe above our heads.
Everyone around the table cheers. But I don’t hear them. I’m floating outside of my body, watching Emmett kiss me because I might have zero relationship experience to compare this to, but it sure as hell feels like he means it.
We spend the rest of the day in a food coma in front of the TV while the twins open all their toys and scatter them around the living room until it begins to resemble FAO Schwarz.
I must doze off during White Christmas. When I wake up, the fairy lights are still sparkling on the tree, but Emmett and I are alone.
I yawn, blink back tears and sit up on the sofa. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A couple of hours.” His mouth twists into the hottest smile I’ve ever seen.
“You should’ve woken me up. I didn’t thank your parents for dinner.”
“You don’t need to thank them. I think… I think they’re enjoying having you here. And my mom would cook that much food if it was only the two of them here for Christmas.”
I smile. This is every Christmas I’ve ever dreamed of, rolled into one sparkling snowy ball. But there’s still something niggling away at the back of my brain, and I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t mention it now while I’ve got Emmett to myself.
“Emmett, is there…” I wish there was an easy way to come out with this. “Are you seeing someone back in New York?”
He strokes my leg absentmindedly with his thumb through the blanket someone threw over me while I was asleep. Round and around. Making circles on my thigh. And I think I already know the answer.
Finally, he looks me in the eye and says, “No, Mary. There isn’t anyone else.”
