“Not without you.” She tugged on my arm. “Uncle Rama doesn’t even believe in Father Christmas.”
I coughed to cover a snort of laughter. “No?”
Rami winced. “She caught me at a bad moment. Take her if you like. I’m about Christmassed out anyway.”
I could believe that. Rami was an amazing parent, but it wasn’t hard to see that a full-on day with multiple sprogs to take care of was wearing on him.
Mae corralled me into the grotto. She sat on Father Christmas’s knee and rudely yanked on his beard. “Did you buy this from the shop?”
Dear Lord.And there’d been me thinking Rami was tired. The git. He’d known this would happen.
Mae was a nightmare. By the time we left the grotto I was pretty sure Old Man Denny was regretting his life choices and wishing he’d never met my dad. He was certainly wishing he’d never met Mae McCade.
Rami’s grin was rakish and evil. “Have fun?”
I ran a hand through my hair, resisting the urge to give him an uncharacteristic middle finger. “It was…an experience. But you knew it would be, right?”
There was no contrition in his face at all as he nodded. “She’d already told me she was going to ask him specific details about his sleigh and the star coordinates of planet Earth and the North Pole.”
“Did she tell you she was going to pull his beard off and call him Dennis?”
“Erm…”
I grabbed his hand and pulled him close, brushing my lips over his ear. “I’m going to collect too, and it’s not going to be a bag of doughnuts.”
Rami sucked in a breath, but I backed off before he could reply. The images going through my brain weren’t age-appropriate, and I needed to cool off.
Maybe he did too. He didn’t look at me for a while. We bought the kids hot dogs for lunch and ate them in front of the brass band playing Christmas carols. Charlie fell asleep, his head lolled on Rami’s shoulder while Addie leant against his legs. Even Mae was quiet, her cheek pressed against my belly as she watched the band play.
It was as close to a perfect moment as I’d ever had and I soaked it in until I noticed Mae staring up at me.
Crouching, I held her small hands in mine. “What is it?”
“I don’t want them to go,” she whispered.
“Who?”
“Uncle Rama and Charlie. Mummo keeps telling us not to get too excited because they’re going home after Christmas, but I don’t want them to.”
I stole a glance at Rami, but he wasn’t looking at us. In truth, he seemed half asleep himself, and damn if that wasn’t ten shades of adorable. I felt Mae’s words too deeply to enjoy it, though.
With a sigh, I turned back to her. “I don’t want them to go either.”
Mae nodded. “Because you love Rama.”
“Excuse me?”
“You love Rama,” she repeated. “And Mummo thinks he loves you too. I heard her say it, so why does he still want to go?”
I had no answer to that, save wet eyes and a burning chest, so I smiled instead, and pinched her cheeks until her frown turned upside down. “Rami has to do what’s best for him and Charlie and we’ll love them both forever no matter what that is, won’t we?”
“Of course, dummy. I’m not silly. I don’t think that man in there is Father Christmas,andI know how to make Daddy’s tractor move backwards.”
Well, okay then. I wasn’t cut out for conversations with tiny perceptive humans, but I wasn’t mad about it. How could I be when she’d seen through me so entirely?
I love him.
It should’ve been a revelation, but it wasn’t. How I felt wasn’t new. Rami had been on my mind since the day I’d met him, and the last month or so had cemented what I’d already known—that he was everything for me, if only life would give us a chance.