Chapter Eight #2
Which went a long way to explaining why he’d turned his back on this tradition. In fact, his best Christmases had been in countries like the UAE or Australia, where it was hot and sunny, and he could spend the day surfing or on a boat, pretending the whole thing didn’t exist.
Leave it to Astrid to force him to confront it, though. He couldn’t even rally himself to care.
‘Perfect,’ she said, her voice slightly uneven as her caramel eyes raked the tree from top to bottom. ‘It’s already perfect.’
‘Then we’re done?’ he teased, earning an eye roll from her that couldn’t help but be sensual.
‘Not quite.’ She moved to the occasional table and lifted her champagne flute, taking a sip before walking to the boxes. ‘I know it’s not completely the same, when the ornaments are new,’ she said, opening the first box.
‘No?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, no. I mean, we always had family ornaments—those that were ours and ours alone.’ She glanced at him before lifting a paper wrapped shape from the box. ‘You must have been the same?’
He shifted his attention to the tree, rather than face her penetrating gaze head on. And yet, wasn’t this the point? He’d been pushing her out on a limb, she was just inviting him to follow her. Or precede her, as the case might have been.
‘I only watched the tree go up on one or two years and I was too young to properly remember.’
The crinkling of the paper indicated she was unwrapping the ornament. ‘How come?’
He glanced at her as she came to stand at his side, holding out a decoration that was not at all what he’d expected.
It wasn’t a store bought, brand new ornament at all.
Instead, it looked like something a child had made—an angel, painted in shades of silver and gold.
He took it, moving towards the tree and looping the ribbon over a branch.
‘Where did you get this?’ he asked, standing back to observe it in place.
‘The children’s hospital in the city. Every year, they make ornaments as a gift to the palace.
I’m their patron,’ she explained, with a wave of the hand.
‘I like to go there whenever I can. To spend time with the children, their parents. To read books and help, if at all possible. Just with morale, you know. It’s a small thing, but if it can do anything to brighten their days… ’
She tapered off and he was glad. He already knew that she was a good person. Not only had he seen evidence of it often, in their time together, he’d also simply felt it, from the first moment they’d spoken. Her integrity and decency were impossible to disguise.
‘Next ornament?’ His voice was deeper than normal, the words throaty and gruff.
She pulled another wrapped shape from the box and handed it to him, then retrieved another for herself.
They removed the packaging without speaking.
Hers was a ceramic dove, also clearly painted by a child, his was a star.
They chose opposite sides of the tree, so when she spoke, their eyes quite naturally met through the bristles of pine branches.
‘Your family must have done this sort of thing, though.’
How long had it been since he’d thought of them as ‘family’? Ever? Never? He grimaced in response. This time, it was Javier who moved to the box and carefully removed two wrapped ornaments, handing one to Astrid then opening his own.
‘You’re not close enough to Otto to know the truth, I presume,’ he said.
‘The truth?’ her eyes flicked to his, a frown briefly crossing her features.
‘You know Carlotta is not my mother.’
‘Of course.’
‘But what you might know is that I’m the product of an affair.’
Astrid’s brow raised.
‘My father met my mother in Spain. As far as I know, it was a whirlwind affair. It meant nothing to him.’
‘And to her?’
He frowned. ‘I have no idea.’
Astrid held the string of her ornament looped over one finger, but her eyes were locked to Javier.
He continued, ‘When I was three, my mother gave me up.’
‘Gave you up?’
‘Gave me away,’ he responded robotically. ‘She was young. She wanted to travel. I was a curveball in life she hadn’t expected. My father had settled a large enough amount on her, when he’d learned of her pregnancy. Enough to care for me and to care for herself.’
Astrid expelled a soft breath, the indignation in her features abundantly obvious. ‘And she used that money to travel?’
He nodded once. ‘At least she had the decency to email my father, to advise him of her plans. She told him she was leaving me with a friend and gave him the address, in case he wanted to visit—which he had been doing, from time to time.’
Astrid shook her head quickly, obviously unsettled by this, but Javier ignored her reaction.
He ignored his own reaction, too—one of shock, that he was being so honest about this.
His childhood and parentage were things he never discussed with anyone.
It was no one’s business but his own. Besides which, he didn’t want sympathy.
He kept his voice neutral, blank of emotion. ‘My father was not pleased. Apparently, my mother had fought to keep me in Spain. He’d never wanted me raised outside of this culture, away from him.’
Astrid’s eyes were heavy on his face. He concentrated on hooking the ornament to the tree before moving to collect another.
‘He flew to Spain and brought me here that same day.’
Astrid frowned contemplatively.
‘I’m very like my father,’ he said, slowly. ‘It’s obvious to anyone who cared to look at us.’
Astrid nodded slowly. ‘I remember him and you’re right. Far more so than Otto.’
He buried a complex swirl of emotions. Because that had been part of the problem.
Otto wasn’t similar enough, the compliments that fell to Javier, because of his likeness to his father, Soren.
Even those became a doubled-edged sword.
No matter how good a compliment felt in the moment, he knew that when he was alone with Carlotta, he’d pay for it.
He’d come to fear anyone’s noticing how like Soren he was.
‘My stepmother struggled to accept me. I was living proof of my father’s infidelity and here she was expected to bring me under their roof, to raise her like her own child. My father simply wanted to protect me, but even I can see the lack of sensitivity inherent to his proposition.’
‘None of that was your fault, though,’ Astrid said, so gently that he knew she understood what a tightrope he’d walked his own childhood.
‘That didn’t particularly matter.’
‘This explains why you’re not close to them,’ she said. ‘And why you left?’
‘I left because I had no choice,’ he said, grimly, handing her another ornament and taking one for himself. ‘After my father’s death, Carlotta had my things packed up and asked me where I would be living so she could arrange delivery.’
Astrid sucked in a sharp breath, her eyes anguished when they locked to his. ‘She didn’t.’
‘We hadn’t even held the funeral and she was shunting me out of their lives.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Astrid said, but with such sadness in her eyes that he knew she did indeed believe he spoke the truth. ‘What did Otto do?’
‘Probably sigh with relief? He hated me, too.’