Page 28 of Christmas Is All Around
Ava raised an eyebrow at her, an expression that definitely had less range than it had pre-Botox. “Why?” Ava’s relationship with their parents was less fraught than Charlotte’s was, although in their adolescence, the situation had been reversed, Ava having been muchmore rebellious than Charlotte. They, obviously, were delighted by Ava’s later career choices. Ava’s teenage rebellion had always seemed to Charlotte some sort of desperate ploy for their parents’ attention, whereas Charlotte simply didn’t care. She’d learned at age nine what happened when her parents paid too much attention to her, and she had lurked quietly at the edges of various family dramas ever since.
“I was feeling guilty, I guess,” Charlotte said, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot and draining the last of her glass of prosecco. Against her will, she glanced over her shoulder at Graham, who was joking with John as he stirred the contents of a mixing bowl. He’d rolled his sleeves up, and she made a very conscious effortnotto look at his forearms. He looked… relaxed, she realized. It was as though every time she’d seen him previously, even in the company of the sisters that he was clearly so fond of, he’d been carrying some unseen weight, and she realized it now only in its absence.
“You don’t normally waste much time on feeling guilty,” Ava said idly, her attention drifting down to Alice, who scowled up at her mother. “I’ve always admired that about you, you know.”
Charlotte, mid-reach for the prosecco bottle, blinked at her sister. “What?”
“Mom and Dad are… what they are,” Ava said, with a vague hand gesture that somehow perfectly encompassed the never-ending drama of their parents’ lives. “They mean well, but they’re, you know, pretty self-involved.”
“Ha,” Charlotte said. This was an understatement.
“But you’re never bothered by it,” Ava continued. “You don’t let them guilt-trip you about the Christmas thing—if it weren’t for you, I would have caved years ago and started flying to California for Christmas, no matter what my show schedule looked like. But you’re just so… steady.”
Charlotte topped up her glass and took a slow sip, considering. “Ididn’t realize you saw me that way.” She’d never been sure how much attention her sister paid to her, period. She loved Ava dearly, but her elder sister was undeniably the more melodramatic of the two, the one comfortable with a spotlight, the one who never hesitated to make her own needs known. Charlotte, by comparison, had always felt like she bobbed along just below the surface, living her life as she pleased—which was itself definitely a luxury—but not attracting much in the way of notice from her family. She’d spent a large chunk of her life ensuring that she wasn’t someone thatneededmuch notice. But maybe Ava had been paying attention all along.
“Well, I do,” Ava said, reaching out her own glass to clink against Charlotte’s. “So now that I’ve flattered you, do I get to tell you that you need to let our erstwhile mince pie baker over there blow your back out?”
“We’re just… business partners,” Charlotte said, which did not sound convincing even to her own ears. Ava gave her a vaguely pitying look.
“If that’s what the kids are calling it these days,” Ava said doubtfully, and then laughed as she dodged the prosecco cork that Charlotte tossed at her head.
Charlotte cast another surreptitious glance over her shoulder at the forearms on display and sighed.
“No,” Charlotte said definitively a couple of hours later. It was nearly one; Ava was simultaneously trying to give Alice a bottle and also check on her phone to see what time the Thai restaurant around the corner opened for takeaway, because the kitchen was not in a state that was remotely conducive to preparing lunch.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Graham demanded. He took a bite of the mince pie in his hand, and his eyes fluttered shut, arapturous expression on his face. Charlotte, who was already somewhat in denial about the fact that she spent a disturbing amount of time trying not to imagine what having sex with this man might be like, did not find this to be helpful. “It’s delicious.”
“No,” she repeated firmly, taking another small bite of her own mince pie and grimacing. “It’s weird. The texture and the flavor combined.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Graham told John solemnly. “And might I induce you to share your recipe?”
John beamed at him. “Of course! I’ve spent years developing it, but you seem trustworthy.”
Graham placed a hand upon his heart. “I promise you, I will guard it carefully.”
John smiled fondly at him; Charlotte was mildly outraged, merely on principle. Was there anyone this man couldn’t charm? “John,” she said wheedlingly, “don’t you think that’s a bit reckless? We barelyknowhim,” she added in a stage whisper, nodding in Graham’s direction. “He could be a criminal. You can’t entrust a criminal with your mince pie recipe.”
John looked unmoved. “Charlotte, love, his family’s lived in the same house for three hundred years. I think we’d know by now if he was a criminal—he wouldn’t be hard to track down.”
“Besides,” added Simone, who had been waltzing in and out of the kitchen all morning, apparently as the mood took her, “I don’t think John should allowyourromantic entanglements to cloudhismince pie judgment.”
“Romantic—”
“Thank you, John,” Graham said loudly, cutting off Charlotte and leaving her to splutter incoherently in an outraged fashion. “If you’ll just let me pop my number in your phone—”
John happily handed over his iPhone, Graham typed away, andbefore Charlotte quite knew what was happening, he was being sent off with a Tupperware of mince pies, promises to text the recipe posthaste, and repeated inquiries from Ava about whether he wassurehe had to leave before lunch.
“I’ve a meeting in the City this afternoon, unfortunately, and then I’m headed down to Eden Priory for the night,” he said apologetically, shrugging back into his coat in a languid, elegant way that was extremely irritating, because it had never occurred to Charlotte until this moment that there was a sexy way to don a coat. Something dark crossed his face at this, like a thundercloud scuttling across the sky, but it was quickly erased. His glance flicked toward her and snagged on her face. “I’ll see you Wednesday?” he asked, in a slightly lower tone.
“Yes. The afternoon?”
“I’ll pick you up at two,” he said, and then with a wave he was gone.
And Charlotte was left in his wake with a messy kitchen to clean, and forty-eight hours in which to try to convince herself that she wasn’t counting the minutes until she’d see him again.
THREE WEEKS TO CHRISTMAS
CHAPTER NINE
