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CHARLOTTE’S FAVOURITE CHRISTMAS ever had been the one she’d told Nico about when they’d been snowed in and Gran had cooked sausages on sticks over the open fire in the drawing room.

Maybe, some time in the future, somebody would ask her about her least favourite Christmas and she knew that, coincidentally, it would also be one of the rare, truly white ones.

This one.

She stared out of the V-shaped gap in the snow piled on the sill of her latticed window and there was the eerie, early morning light that only a thick blanket of snow could create. There was nothing to disturb the perfection of the Christmas-card scene in the gardens of Highton Hall. The footprints on the lawn below had probably been made by a fox but if her grandmother had seen them in years gone by, she would have told a small Charlotte that they were the tracks left by Santa’s reindeer.

The thought should have brought a poignant smile to her face but instead Charlotte felt the lump in her throat get bigger.

She had never felt this…bleak.

This lonely.

This…empty.

As if she’d lost something huge that she would never have back again. Like her heart? Or maybe it was part of her soul. The part that she’d shared with Nico. Yes. That’s what it felt like. He had brought light into the darkest part of her being and, by touching it, it had somehow become his, even if he didn’t want it.

Was that what love was? Giving away the most important part of yourself?

No…Charlotte found her picture-perfect view becoming blurry. It was finding someone who recognised that part. Accepted it. Made it better than it had been before simply by being there.

And it wasn’t one-sided, that had been the clincher. Nico had shared that part of himself with her. The lonely little boy who was still there deep inside. The one who’d been hurt and had seen people he loved get hurt, and was determined to never be the cause of such hurt himself.

Nico thought he didn’t know what he needed. That he couldn’t possibly make the right choice of a person to be with for the rest of his life. He thought he was incapable of falling in love.

And maybe he had the kind of strength to hold himself back from that kind of surrender but it was blindingly obvious what he needed.

A tiny robin, its bright red breast a decoration in itself, fluttered into view and landed on the windowsill, tilting its head and to give Charlotte a cheeky glance.

‘He just needs what we all need,’ she informed the robin. ‘To be loved.’

The robin fluttered off like an echo of laughter.

As if it was that simple…

It was. Charlotte had found that person, hadn’t she? She had given him that part of herself she could never give to anyone else.

But it was that impossibly difficult at the same time.

Because finding someone that you connected with at a soul-deep level wasn’t enough. They had to feel the same way or it could never begin to work.

And Nico didn’t feel the same way. How could he when they’d only known each other for a couple of days?

But he didn’t even want to see her again. Good grief, he’d told her that she could leave the ring with his secretary, if he wasn’t around.

It had meant nothing. A bit of harmless pretence to make an old lady happy before she died. Repayment for the imagined debt of losing her laptop. A bonus of a one-night stand as well?

Charlotte forced herself to move. She couldn’t stand here dwelling on how miserable she felt. It was Christmas Day after all. And her toes were freezing. Dressing quickly, she chose clothes for warmth, donning black woollen leggings and an oversized crimson pullover on top of a black bodysuit. No doubt her grandmother would expect her to change for dinner but that was a few hours away yet and it would be warmer downstairs when the open fires were stoked up.

Maybe Christmas dinner wasn’t so far away after all. The rich aroma of roasting meat caught Charlotte’s nostrils as she went downstairs. Betty, the cook, must be busy in the kitchen, probably under Gran’s strict supervision. Charlotte would probably be given a laden plate of bacon and eggs and an admonishment about the perils of laziness and sleeping in.

The Christmas tree in the huge foyer of this grand old house had coloured lights twinkling merrily and there were gifts beneath, enticingly wrapped in pretty paper and tied with bows of satin ribbon.

It looked like one of the festive pictures that had played against the wall of that Venetian restaurant…good grief, only three days ago? On the evening when she’d given in to the temptation of pretending that Nico was her lover. When she’d accidentally become ‘engaged’ to him.

The ring was still on her finger. Touching it, Charlotte found she could twist it more easily now. Because she was away from the efficient central heating of the Orient Express and in a huge, chilly ancestral home?

Or was it because she felt so cold inside? So bleak…

Whatever. She couldn’t take it off yet, could she? Not on Christmas Day, when it would be the first thing Gran would notice. She would have to find a solution to this situation but not today.

And she couldn’t let Gran see how miserable she was either. Pasting what she hoped was a bright smile on her face, Charlotte walked past the Christmas tree and went down the long hallway to the kitchen.

Betty was basting an enormous turkey. Her husband, John, was polishing silver serviette rings over newspaper spread on one end of the kitchen table. Her daughter was peeling Brussels sprouts and scoring an X into the stalks.

‘I was just about to put some breakfast on trays and bring it up,’ Betty said after Christmas greetings had been exchanged. ‘I was getting worried.’

‘Has Gran not been down yet?’

‘Not a peep from her. And she’s always the first up on Christmas Day.’

‘I’ll take her up a cup of tea,’ Charlotte said. She was worried herself now. ‘I expect she’s just tired out after her big adventure.’

‘You look a bit peaky yourself, pet.’ Betty and her family had been a part of Highton Hall for as long as Charlotte could remember. They were more like relatives than staff. Family. Charlotte’s smile was genuine this time.

‘I’m fine, Betty. I just need a cup of tea, too.’

Betty had been patting her hand. Her jaw dropped.

‘Oh…my… . Is that what I think it is?’

Charlotte held up her hand and the diamond flashed as it caught the light. Her heart sank. The game had to go on a little longer no matter how much worse it was going to make her feel.

‘I guess I had a bit of an adventure myself, Betty. You’ll hear all about it as soon as Gran’s up, I’m sure.’

‘I’d better.’ Betty busied herself with a teapot and a china cup and saucer. She added a couple of tiny gingerbread stars to the saucer. ‘Go on…tell Lady G that we’re waiting to hear all about it.’

Her grandmother’s bedroom was still dark.

‘You awake, Gran? I’ve got a cup of tea for you.’ Charlotte balanced the cup in one hand as she drew back the heavy drapes to let the bright, mid-morning light into the room.

And then she turned, and didn’t notice how much tea she was spilling on the Persian carpet as she raced to her grandmother’s bedside and dropped the cup and saucer on the bedside table. Gingerbread stars floated in a saucer full of tea.

‘Gran…’

Lady Geraldine was lying with her knees pulled up and the bedcover gripped between clenched fists. Her face was white with a sheen of perspiration on her forehead. Her pulse was racing. And weak. Her abdomen was swollen and hard to the touch. And it only took the lightest touch to make her cry out in agony.

‘Oh…God…’ Charlotte picked up the phone beside the half-empty cup of tea. She dialled only three numbers.

‘I need an ambulance,’ she said crisply as soon as her call was answered. ‘It’s urgent.’

Emergencies like heart attacks and strokes were no respecters of what day it happened to be.

Extreme weather was more of a problem on days when people simply had to be somewhere else for an important occasion and the number of accidents rose.

And there were plenty of people like him who had no family to be with and no desire to celebrate Christmas and carried on with stupid behaviour like getting into fights and getting beaten up or stabbed.

Worst of all, there were the people who found the season too much of a reminder of what they didn’t have so the rate of attempted suicides always went up, too.

It was not a good day to be in charge of an emergency department but the staff always did their absolute best to make it as cheerful as possible, and Nico had always managed to join in and encourage them.

Why was it so hard this year?

Why did he feel so…bleak?

So…empty?

It was ridicolo. Ridiculous.

He had his life back the way he wanted it to be. Needed it to be.

So why did he feel so off-kilter? So perduto, almost?

And why was it always Italian words that came into his head when something stirred him deeply? The past was behind him and best forgotten. Even dredging up happy memories, such as the favourite Christmas he’d shared with Charlotte, was not a good thing to do. No wonder he couldn’t settle into doing what he most loved to do and lose himself in the demands of his work.

He would go and do another thorough neurological check on the elderly gentleman in cubicle three who had fallen when he’d gone outside to sweep snow off the steps in preparation for his family arriving. He’d hit his head hard enough to need a period of observation before they could consider letting him go home to his Christmas dinner. Maybe it hadn’t just been the slippery steps and the fall responsible for him losing consciousness either. Perhaps a more thorough cardiovascular work-up would be justified.

Imagine what would have happened in Venice if Charlotte hadn’t been there to see beyond what others had seen?

‘Incoming, Dr Moretti,’ a nurse told him as she hurried past. ‘Eighty-something-year-old female with an abdominal mass and acute bowel obstruction. She’s tachycardic, short of breath and vomiting. GCS of thirteen.’

Dio… An elderly woman with a bowel obstruction that could potentially be due to a tumour? Was everything today going to remind him of either Charlotte or her nonna? They were probably sitting in front of an open fire right now. Drinking mulled wine Or eggnog, perhaps and listening to Christmas carols. Maybe there was a piano and Charlotte would be playing carols. Or maybe they were opening their gifts to each other.

Or…maybe something terrible had happened. Nico could see the ambulance team coming through the doors of his department now. He couldn’t see much of the figure on the stretcher because she was bundled up in warm blankets and her face was covered by an oxygen mask. The person holding the bag of IV fluids aloft wasn’t part of the paramedic crew, however.

It was Charlotte.

No. Could this be the beginning of the end for Jendi? Surely not today, of all days…

‘Resus One,’ Nico ordered, before the triage nurse had a chance to consider priority. ‘And get a surgical consult down here stat.’

He ushered the entourage into the resus area reserved for major cases. There was no time for any more than brief eye contact with Charlotte as Nico listened to the handover from the paramedics and prepared to launch an investigative and stabilisation protocol that could deal with this emergency. There was no way he was going to let Lady Geraldine Highton die in his department on Christmas Day.

As awful as it was, this was just the kind of challenge he’d needed. That disturbing, empty feeling had completely vanished and Nico had never felt more in control. Or more determined to do his absolute best for his patient. And her family.

The waiting was the worst.

At least all the tension and drama and fear since the moment she’d found Gran in such a dreadful state had been balanced by the swiftness of action and the company of others. The paramedics had been brilliant, using a four-wheel-drive vehicle to get to the estate and then transferring Gran to a faster ambulance to get her into the city. The roads had been appalling with all the snow and traffic jams from a big accident on the M1. They’d had to stick to routes that had been cleared in the city and get to an emergency department that was not only open on Christmas Day but prepared to accept a major case.

It had taken too much time and all the while Lady Geraldine’s condition had been deteriorating. It was becoming hard for her to breathe and her level of consciousness was slipping. By the time they’d arrived at the totally unexpected destination of the Hammer-smith—Nico’s hospital—she was unconscious and the situation was looking bad enough for Charlotte to be unaware of anything except the relief of getting to a place where they might be able to help her grandmother.

And then there’d been the drama of trying to get Gran stable enough for the surgeon to consider that operating might be an option on an eighty-two-year-old woman. There’d been fluid resuscitation and ventilation assistance, blood tests and scans and ECGs. People rushing in and out with the kind of controlled chaos Charlotte was all too familiar with, but this was her gran being treated and she’d never felt less like a doctor.

Waiting like this in an area set aside for the families of patients undergoing surgery was a new experience too. It was nerve-racking and felt interminable. There were only one or two theatres being used for absolute emergencies today and just a skeleton staff on duty so it felt like she was completely alone and she’d been here for what felt like hours. Surely the surgery was over by now? Why hadn’t someone come to tell her what was going on?

Had they forgotten she was even here?

No…Charlotte could hear footsteps echoing in the wide, empty hallway outside. Coming closer. Someone was coming to see her and what they had to say could possibly be devastating news.

She couldn’t move. Could only stand there, with her fingers pressed against her mouth to stifle a cry. Afraid to breathe. Unable to blink even.

And then a tall figure filled the doorway. A powerful presence entered the small space of the waiting room and…

And Charlotte wasn’t alone any more.

‘Carlotta…cara…’ Nico gathered Charlotte into his arms and held her close. ‘Grazie a Dio ho trovato voi.’

He’d had to come even though he had no real news for her yet. Standing there, in the observation deck of the operating theatre, it had come back with a vengeance.

That empty feeling.

Had it really been the challenge of fighting for Jendi’s life that had made it go away? The focus on medicine that was the most important thing in his life? Or had it had been because Charlotte was so close to him again?

He had to find out. His shift in the emergency department was finished and there would be no professional distraction for him now. If he found Charlotte and that empty feeling disappeared then he would know the truth.

And it had. Dio mio, but it had evaporated like mist in hot Italian sunshine as soon as he’d gathered her in his arms and held her close to his heart.

The truth was irrefutable. It wasn’t work he needed like the oxygen in the air he breathed. It was this woman. Charlotte. Without her, he would have that horrible, empty feeling for the rest of his life.

‘Carlotta…’ The word was a breath that got lost in her hair.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

Neither did Nico. But it was wonderful. So joyous.

‘I can’t speak Italian, Nico…’ She was wriggling in his arms, pulling back so she could see his face. ‘What’s happening?’ Her breath was a fearful gulp. ‘Where’s Gran?’

How could he be so selfish? Nico stroked her hair and focused enough to change languages.

‘There’s a break in surgery. They’re doing a biopsy of the tumour. It will be a bigger operation if they decide to try and remove it all and it would be too much of a risk if it’s…’

She knew what he was saying. If the tumour was aggressively malignant, they would only attempt a palliative procedure to deal with the bowel obstruction.

But Charlotte’s eyes had widened. ‘The surgeon thinks there’s a chance it’s not malignant? That it’s…benign?’

Was it cruel to give her hope or a gift that he could share with her for at least a little while? The point was moot because she knew the answer. They wouldn’t be interrupting surgery for the length of time it took to use a technician on Christmas Day if it wasn’t a good possibility.

‘Are you going back? Can you find out?’

Nico shook his head. ‘They’ll come and tell us. I want to wait here with you. I…I have to.’

‘You have to?’ Charlotte’s tone was as odd as his had been. A note of wonder? ‘Why?’

‘Because…’ There was no point in being less than honest with her. There never had been and never would be. ‘Because being with you…it makes the empty feeling go away.’

‘Oh…’ Charlotte’s gaze was holding his and he could actually see it melting. Getting misty. ‘It does…It so does, doesn’t it?’

‘You feel it too?’ A surge of emotion was threatening to explode inside Nico’s chest. Gratitude? Relief? Hope? No. It was bigger than any of those. ‘I’ve never felt like this,’ he confessed. ‘I don’t know what this is…but it’s…it’s…’

‘I think it’s love,’ Charlotte whispered. ‘I’m in love with you and that’s why I have the empty feeling when you’re not here.’

‘I’m in love with you…’ Nico tested the words out loud. Strange and new but…yes…they felt right. He tried them in Italian to make sure. ‘Cara mia, innamorata di te.’

And that made them real but still unbelievable. ‘How?’ he whispered. ‘How did this happen? So fast?’

‘I don’t know…’ But Charlotte was smiling. Almost laughing, but there were tears in her eyes at the same time. ‘But it’s Christmas…and it’s the most wonderful gift I could ever have been given. I love you so much, Nico. I’ve never felt like this before. It feels like everything that’s ever happened to me, even all the bad things, were worth it because it led me here. To you.’

He had to kiss her then. Slowly. Tenderly. The bursting feeling inside him intensified and turned to molten joy. It was a long time before he could lift his head to look into Charlotte’s eyes again.

‘When I was in Venice,’ Nico told her with a smile, ‘a moment or two before I saw you at the accident scene I was having to push my way through the crowd and I heard this old woman and you know what she said?’

‘No.’ Charlotte was smiling up at him. A tear escaped and Nico let go of one of her hands so that he could brush it away for her. ‘What did she say?’

‘That it was almost Christmas. A good time for a miracle to happen. I think that’s what this is, Carlotta. A miracle.’

Charlotte sniffed and the sound was so unromantic that Nico could feel himself fall even deeper in love with her. Had he really thought he was incapable of doing this? He was good at it. With a bit of practice he would be the best.

When Charlotte scrubbed at her nose, he caught her hand. The one with the ring on it. He seemed to remember it had been quite a struggle to get it onto her finger but it came off quite easily.

Charlotte went very, very still.

‘You know what this is.’ Nico had to clear the sudden gruffness of his voice away. ‘Of all the people in the world, you are the only one who can know the symbolism of this ring. The…’ His voice cracked again. ‘The promise it carries.’

Her gaze clung to his. Her head dipped and rose again in a slow, solemn nod.

‘I didn’t give you a choice about wearing it before,’ Nico continued. ‘I’m giving you that choice now. Will you wear this ring, inamorata? Will you accept my promise?’

‘Oh…yes, Nico.’ Her hand was shaking as she held it out for him to slip the ring back on her finger. ‘But…’

He stilled her words with a gentle finger on her lips. ‘It’s like your nonna said,’ he murmured. ‘It doesn’t mean we have to get married next week. It’s a promise of commitment. We can take all the time we need to make sure it’s perfect.’

The sound of footsteps outside the waiting room sent a sudden chill down Nico’s spine. Someone was coming to give them news.

What if it was bad news?

The only way this could be truly perfect would be to have Jendi at their wedding, wouldn’t it? To see her, at some point in the future, cradle her first great-grand-child in her arms.

To know that the biggest thing on that bucket list of hers had been well and truly ticked off.

It was the surgeon, who’d come straight from Theatre to find them. He’d stripped off his gown and gloves but he was still in his scrubs and white gumboots. He still had a hat covering his head and neck.

But he was smiling. ‘Your gran’s a real trouper,’ he told Charlotte. ‘Tough as old boots, in fact. She’s come through this astonishingly well. You’ll be able to go and see her in Recovery very soon.’

‘Oh…thank God…’ Charlotte was clinging to Nico’s hand with a vice-like grip. ‘And…and the tumour?’

‘Benign. We got it all out. Can’t see any reason why she won’t keep ticking along for a good few years yet.’ The surgeon’s smile widened. ‘Merry Christmas.’

Charlotte was sobbing in his arms now. Nico had tears on his own face.

Buon Natale, indeed.

The best ever, without a doubt.