Page 29 of A Copenhagen Snowmance

Chapter Twenty-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. The real story 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 I do want 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. And I 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 … perfectly not nefarious, 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.”

His blush has only just subsided from last time and now here it is again. But deeper this time.

“Well, firstly, a lot of my knowledge is supposition. When I saw she was pregnant and she wanted me to go, she was quite blunt about my role being over. I don’t have more detail to tell you.

I’ve been angry about it, but that gets me nowhere.

Lajla isn’t going to communicate with me if I’m angry, so I’ve let that go. ”

Anna is confused by this concept. She’s been angry for over a year and a half and simply letting it go has never been on her option menu.

“So, I really didn’t have much to tell you. But more than that, and my aforementioned bruised ego, I suppose I didn’t want you to think badly of Lajla. Or Nikoline for that matter. Some people would be judgey of both.”

This nearly blows Anna’s mind. “So, let me get this straight. Even after Lajla did what she did and then won’t speak to you, you’re worried about putting her in a bad light?

” Anna would have painted Carl as Beelzebub had she had anyone to talk to about him.

Had Maiken not been involved, they would have eviscerated his reputation and thrown it all to the wolves. With delight.

He gives her a flat smile. “Pretty much. I don’t gain anything by doing otherwise.”

Well, you’re missing out on some Schadenfreude there, Anna thinks, but keeps it to herself.

The sails of her anger are now positively drooping.

He is a decent guy. Exactly the guy she told Lajla he was. Her arms seem to uncross themselves and drop to her lap.

“Exactly how do you see this resolving itself, Jamie?” she asks, tired. Being angry exhausts her. Facing conflict even more so.

“I don’t know, Anna. Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you. I think I justified it as being the truth, just the edited truth. I should have given you more info so you could have made an informed decision. I think the kiss had messed with my brain.”

I know, right?! Anna thinks. It isn’t just her who’s frazzled by them.

She tries to keep a plain face in response to his small smile, but it’s hard.

Sensing he’s still not forgiven, Jamie lays it all out there.

“Can you imagine, Anna, what’s it’s like to find out you have a kid you didn’t know about?

I’ve missed her growing in the womb, I missed her birth, and her growing to be a toddler and all the firsts.

I … I didn’t even know her name until you just said it.

Can you imagine being denied getting to know your child, and them you?

I always wanted to know my mother better than I did, warts and all.

She’s part of who I am and without her I grew up feeling there was a large part of my puzzle missing.

I don’t want that for Nikoline. If she doesn’t like me when she’s older, she can choose not to see me.

Fair enough. But as a little kid, she has a right to know her dad, too, don’t you think?

Especially as I want to know her. One day she’ll ask about me, and it breaks my heart to think she might believe I didn’t want to know her.

Because I do. Very much. But until Lajla will talk to me, I can’t plead my case.

I’m stuck. And I saw a chance to maybe loosen a knot there.

You gave me a little in and I took it.” He holds his hands out, again the palms-up expression, and Anna sees this for what it is; an ideas-man who is out of good ideas and so followed a duff one.

“I get it,” she finally says. “I do.” She remembers asking Ida about her not having a dad when other children mostly did.

Ida had simply said they didn’t need one, that they had Morfar, which had satisfied young Anna.

She hadn’t missed something she’d never had and Morfar had definitely been enough.

“Thank you,” Jamie says quietly.

“Please don’t lie to me again,” Anna adds, “even by omission. I have some trust issues since Carl.”

“Of course.” He gives her a nod and they seem to have reached an accord. “Can I ask you what happened with Lajla?”

Anna thinks back to the end of their conversation.

“Well, I’d already said you were a good guy and how we adored each other, so I chose not to backtrack on that.

I don’t know what she’ll think, but I gave you a good reference.

And after she told me how she’d duped you, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. ”

“Because of the ick,” he says, deadpan.

“Absolutely because of the ick.”

“Thank you,” he says again in a tone of blended gratitude and contrition.

This is a side of Jamie she hasn’t seen before.

The confounded and the resigned. For a man who has ideas, who shakes things up and makes things happen, who seeks to fix things, she can see the millstone around his neck that this is for him.

What’s more, she feels a deep-seated desire to help him.