Home For Christmas by Fiona Greene Read Free Book Online

smiley-faced blooms designed to jiggle in the breeze. Perfect to slide in front of shrubbery or an evergreen houseplant. She’d have pinks and reds for Valentine’s Day, expand out into yellow and orange tones for Mother’s Day and by Halloween she’d be doing them as skulls and pumpkins. She pulled her notepad over and jotted ‘cut-outs on skulls with fairy lights behind’. Way spookier that way.
    Layla picked up the crafting pot and headed over to her painting station, humming as she went. Behind her, her phone pinged and she resisted the urge to dump the pot, and run across to her bag to answer it.
    ‘Stop it right now, Layla Preston. You are acting like a lovesick schoolgirl waiting for a boy to ring.’
    Not any boy though.
    Tate.
    She hadn’t heard a peep from him in the forty-eight hours since she’d sent her email. Her confidence, once sky-high, was now cowering in the basement. She slid the half-finished work onto the table, walked to the sink with a measured pace, washed her hands and only then did she turn back to her bag. With trembling fingers she took her phone out and opened her emails.
    Single male seeks companion for dinner at the RSL .
    Layla felt behind her for her stool and slid onto it, heart pounding. She closed her eyes, then opened them and looked at her phone again. No, her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. She opened the message.
    Hi Layla ,
    Your last email really had me thinking. My mother and I always moved around a lot when I was little, and our Christmas was the complete opposite of yours. Our family was different to yours. There wasn’t much to celebrate and no money for extras. I still remember my first Christmas roast — the year I joined up. I hadn’t realised how much anger I was still carrying around until your latest email .
    You were right to say what you said. You lost your brother at Christmas, and yet you can still celebrate. I have no excuse to hold onto my bitterness. I’m sorry if what I said in my last email upset you. The last thing I wanted if we kept in contact was to be the wet blanket hanging over your special celebrations .
    I’ve kept the tree you sent — it’s the first Christmas tree that I’ve owned (and the only green tree around this place). It’s hanging from the bunk above mine. Makes me smile every time I see it .
    Tuesday night curry buffet at the RSL sounds like my kind of place. I’d like to catch up with you when I get back home. I’m definitely single. The only problem, I’m stationed at Lavarack, so it might have to be the Saturday night bistro and I might have to fly down to make it. But we’ll figure that out once I’m back in Aus .
    Tate .
    The phone dropped out of Layla’s fingers onto the bench. My God, she could feel the pain radiating from Tate in those few brief lines. No wonder he’d run a mile when she’d blathered on about Christmas. She couldn’t even imagine being a kid and not having a tree.
    Or presents.
    She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to stop that thought before it began. Already the questions were whirling around in her brain. Trying to make sense of what sort of family could do that to a child. And what happened to that child as they grew up? She read the email again but it didn’t give her any answers, just more questions.
    One question haunted her for the rest of the day.
    Was her present the only one Tate received this Christmas?

Chapter Five
    Tate bit his lip as he stared at his inbox, empty bar for the three new emails he’d received overnight. One from his mother, one from Layla and the regular info dump from Lavarack Barracks. He opened his mother’s email first.
    Tate
    Moving across to the Pilbara next month. Brian says there’s money to be made in the gold mines. I’ll need some relocation funds. Usual account. Talk soon, Dee Dee .
    He gripped the edge of the desk with fingers like claws as the heat flooded through him.
    Why did he bother? God knows he’d tried. Every single time he emailed