Page 47 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
Anna thinks of the little girl she saw the other day. The one Jamie couldn’t stop staring at. The one with the familiar face. Anna had quickly let go of the thought, distracted by something she can’t even remember now, but now it seems oh-so-obvious. Anna is having difficulty recalling what she is supposed to know, and also how she genuinely feels about it, or fake-ly feels about it.
“And then he turns up outside my office some months later, just as I’m about to go on maternity leave. I’d thought it best simply not to reply to his mails. He wanted to surprise me, but he saw my stomach, did the maths and then he really wanted to get together. I said I didn’t want that. I hoped he’d go back to Scotland, but now he has a job here.”
Her eyes blaze. “He can’t take her away from me. I won’t let him. I have custody. He’s not even on the birth certificate.”
Anna suspects Jamie won’t be remotely bothered by paperwork or lack thereof. Nikoline is his child, it’s as clear as day now. He knew that when they were all in the food halls and he had chosen not to tell Anna. He had chosen to lie. Anna feels anger rising in her, but with all the who-knows-what confusion, she cannot work out if it’s indignation at the way Lajla has used Jamie or at the way Jamie has used her.
ChapterTwenty-One
Jamie’s in the kitchen when she storms through the front door. She’d hoped he wouldn’t be. Her plan has been to pack a bag, call Katrine to see if she could stay and then leave him a strongly worded note. It would be so much easier just to walk away from this. Conflict-free. But there he stands in the middle of the kitchen, a mug of coffee in one hand and the pot in the other.
“Coffee?” he asks.
She takes the visual clues, the words drowned out by the roaring fury she’s built up in her head. The smile slides off his face as he registers her less than friendly expression.
“What’s the matter?”
Normally, Anna would just say “nothing” and vacate the area. She’s also a master of the loaded “I’m fine” when Carl had questioned a bad mood. But for some reason, now, Anna lets loose. “You lied to me, Jamie,” she fires out. She’s been going through it over and over in her head as she stomped home with such vigour that dog walkers actively crossed the street to give her space.
Jamie takes a second cup and pours it full, maintaining eye contact with her. He isn’t shying from it, but he’ll clearly approach it under his own terms. And some caution. He walks to the table, places the cups and pulls out a chair for her to sit in. After a moment she reluctantly does so, in spite of really wanting to walk out. He calmly sits down next to her but pulls the chair around so he’s facing her. By design, he’s got them so they’re on the same level and without the table between them. She half expects him to mirror her stance, but he chooses not to tightly cross his arms across his chest as she has.
“Do you want to talk me through this?” he says.
Anna shakes her head crossly. “The only thing I want is the truth,” she snaps, contradicting herself.
He spreads his fingers, palms up, in a gesture of supplication.
“I bumped into Lajla,” she says, “by the lakes. She told me about Nikoline and about the two of you. Therealstory about the two of you. And, being your fake girlfriend, I had to play along like I knew all about it and hide my shock. But the thing that really really annoys me is that you lied to me, and it feels like I’m complicit in something dubious around a single mum and her little kid. It gives me the ick, Jamie. Which I think you knew, hence why you lied in describing the favour you wanted.”
Anna thinks about how she had blithely agreed to his plan, suspecting it was the kisses which had befuddled her and grossly minimised her scrutiny skills. She should have asked him far more than she did. Her lips had overridden her critical mind. Her lust had probably thrown sisterhood under the bus, too. She feels shame, and she wants Jamie to bear it, too.
And judging by the redness of his face and his look of dismay, she’s achieving something on that front.
“Were you using me to get closer to her so you can take Nikoline from her?” Anna demands. This has sat like a knot in her since Lajla said it. While, until this revelation, Anna would have put money on Jamie having great dad potential, supportive and kind, now she’s scared she’s been a pawn in something nefarious.
Jamie’s jaw drops. “Absolutely not! Is that what she thinks?”
“Yes, Jamie. That’s what she thinks.”
Jamie tips his head back and blows out a breath. “If she’d just let me talk to her, I could have told her this. I’m not trying to take anything from her. I would never. I’m sure there are legal routes I could have looked at, if that was the case. But I wouldn’t.”
His face is the same face she’s been living with for days. However closely she stares at it, she can’t see a glint of malice there. Is she just bad at spotting deceit? She doesn’t know and she can’t work it out. What dawns on her, though, is that his concern isn’t with Anna being angry at him– he seems to accept that– but more about Lajla’s fear.
“If anything I want to help her, Anna. Look, we’ve both seen Nikoline. She’s like a mini me. I’ve no doubt she’s mine. I accepted long ago that Lajla doesn’t want anything romantic with me, though I was slower on the uptake that she actually never had– which by the way does wonders for a guy’s ego, when he’d thought he was a bit of a stud at that conference, and it turned out to be true but on a very different level.” He says it to make her laugh, perhaps, but she can see the hurt there. One day, Lajla might do him a favour and point out he had all the attributes she wanted for her donor.
“I digress. I’ve no feelings for her romantically, but Idowant to help. I have money to help her. It isn’t easy bringing up a kid on your own. I should know, having been that kid. And if one day she’d trust me to help with the childcare, I’d be up for that, too. More than happy. I know it’s not childcare when you’re a parent, but I recognise that until Lajla says otherwise, it will never be more than that.
“But here’s the thing, Anna. I want to help because I want to know my kid.AndI want my kid to know me. That’s it. That’s all I’m steering for. Not to encroach on their life, but at least to take some of the weight off and perhaps even enhance it.”
That all seems… perfectlynotnefarious, Anna thinks, and it takes some of the wind from her sails, but then she remembers;he lied.
“You lied to me, Jamie! Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” Why can’t men be trustworthy?!
His shoulders sink. “I don’t know. I got this idea, and I just ran with it. I figured if I told you the Nikoline part you’d say no. And for various reasons I really didn’t want you to say no.”
Various reasons. She’d be coming back to that.
“You could have told me how Lajla used you.”
