Eliza ran through the cabin, ignoring Shay, who was on the pull-out sofa bed, and went straight into Seph’s room. The cabin wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm enough to sleep there without wearing something, not that Eliza would care, but I didn’t want to come face to face with my brother’s junk.
There was a huge giggle followed by a loud yell. Shay bolted upright and squealed, Seph’s yell loud enough to wake a sleeping ER doctor who’d just worked forty hours straight.
“Happee Cwistmas!” Eliza had definitely turned up her volume button.
Shay stared at us as if trying to compute exactly where he was or who he was. His dark hair, almost black, was mussed and messy, stuck up like a little boy’s, and his eyes looked bluer than normal. His parents, my step-aunt and uncle, were spending Christmas in Ireland with his mother’s elderly parents. Having the five Green children was going to be too much for them in a small house with no nearby hotels or B & B’s, so they’d all ended up with us.
“This was all her idea.” Killian nodded at me. “I’d have let you had a nice long lie in.”
Shay grinned and I understood why he was going to take Seph’s manwhore crown away. As much as he worked, he took relief in brief flings and one-night stands.
“I can lie-in tomorrow, unless Little Miss has something else planned? The wedding isn’t until the afternoon.” He lay back down again. “Will there be coffee or were we your first victims?”
By now, Max would’ve cleared up his clothes and made coffee, I’d have put my mortgage on it.
“Mummy, Unkkie Seph said that bad word.” Eliza walked out of Seph’s room, dragging him with her hand. He had creases down the side of his face and was wearing the tattiest pair of sweats I’d ever seen and an old Manchester City T-shirt.
“Now I know why you’re single. If this is your morning look, the girls must run screaming from your place.”
He flipped me the bird. “Next time your daughter’s going to wake me up at the butt crack of dawn, I’ll make sure I’m wearing a suit. Tell me there’s coffee.”
19
Four romance novels – from Payton to Lainey
Marie
The first Christmaswhen Ava was old enough to understand what was going on was magical. That morning, Callum and Seph had been first down, desperate to see if Santa had been. By this point, the eldest three knew that Santa wasn’t real, and they also knew that if they spoiled it for the younger ones, Santa wouldn’t visit them again.
It was a threat I was quite prepared to follow through with and fortunately, one I never did need to carry out. Seph still believed in Santa at the age of ten, when someone at his primary school let it slip. Payton had figured it out the year before, when the sneaky child hid in a small gap between the sofa and the wall to wait up for him. What she’d seen was me and her father unloading bags of gifts and then putting our feet up with a whisky.
We’d limited presents. They would’ve been easy to spoil and that had happened in the past with the older children, Grant pouring gifts on them to make up for him not being around. The first Christmas, the year when I burned everything, we decided to set up new traditions: the day was for family; no checking emails or the news; TV off, Christmas songs on; presents unwrapped and then a big breakfast, followed by a walk. We played board games before dinner and they carried on or people read while everyone did their job in the kitchen.
As grown-ups, most of the kids had come home for Christmas. There were the years Ava was in New York, or when we were in Canada, but we always ended up with four or five of them, maybe with boyfriends or girlfriends, and we kept the same routine.
And I still made up stockings.
Grant thought I was mad, especially as the family was growing exponentially. Six of the kids had partners, two of them had their own children, more were on the way, but I enjoyed making up the stockings with silly bits of things in that I knew they liked. Pens, chocolates, favourite shower gels – little bits of stuff.
Every year, Grant made me one. He hadn’t a clue what to do that first year. He saw me making them for the kids and apparently, one evening when I was out, sat down with Max, Claire and Jackson and asked them what should go in my stocking.
He’d gotten better at it since, but I still had some of the things from that first Christmas. The card Max had made, the candle Claire had bought and decorated, the book Jackson had ‘found’ and gifted.
This year there were presents for me from Eliza and Teddy, and I’d had my first homemade card from Eliza, which I’d keep along with all the others. Next year, there’d be another three babies; Claire’s, Payton’s and a third, which I suspected was Victoria.
Hoped it was.
I sat down, nursing a coffee. I’d woken up early enough to see Max slip out of the kitchen with some of last night’s clothes, and when I’d entered, the room looked incredibly tidy. I chose not to think about why, instead flicking on the coffee machine and opting to have a few minutes of silence before the chaos of Christmas morning began.
It was Lainey who came in first, looking fresh and neat, as she always did. She was a therapist who specialised in using horses, and had lived in the States for the last four years where most of the Green children had been. For various (mainly family) reasons they were moving back to England, my brother and his wife looking at settling back in Ireland when he finally retired.
Life was good.
The door opened, framing Maxwell.
“You finished clearing up last night’s detritus?”
He managed to look suitably guilty.
