Page 33 of Christmas Is All Around
But she’d allowed Graham this peek at her—at the touchy, vulnerable side of herself that she kept carefully hidden—and he’d not even hesitated for a moment before coming to her defense. Before making it clear that what her parents—or anyone else—thought about her was irrelevant to whathedid.
And Charlotte, who had tried her hardest not to care what anyone thought of her for a very, very long time, was beginning to wonder, as they made their way back to the entrance to retrieve their coats and then step into the December chill, if she might care, just a tiny bit, about Graham Calloway’s opinion.
CHAPTER TEN
Two days later, she was working in the coffee shop down the street from Ava’s when Graham sat down in the chair opposite her without so much as a word in greeting, clutching a cup of tea and wearing a Christmas sweater so ugly that she honestly wondered if he’d lost a bet.
“Why in god’s name are you wearing that?” she asked, deciding that they were past any need for niceties in their relationship.
He glanced down, his expression softening slightly at the sight of the giant, glowing-nosed Rudolph that had been carefully knitted onto the green sweater. “It’s my Christmas jumper.”
“It’s the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen. Where did you get it—dumpster diving in the dead of night?”
He took a sip of tea, then set down his cup on the table. “It belonged to my father,” he said evenly.
Hisdeadfather, he didn’t bother to clarify.
“Oh.” Charlotte scrambled to salvage this. “It’s… whimsical.”
“Is it?” he asked dryly, running a finger idly around the rim of his cup. “I’m so glad to hear it. You can’t imagine how desperately I strive for whimsy.”
“I mean, it has a sort of… vintage charm,” she offered this time, trying a different tack. “You know—so ugly it’s good, that sort of thing?”
“I think you were best off calling it horrifying and leaving it at that,” he advised.
“Noted.” She paused, wishing that her coffee cup wasn’t empty, so that she’d have something to bury her face in. “Did you have a reason for stopping by, other than to have me unknowingly insult cherished family heirlooms?”
This, at least, prompted a smile—or the small curve of the lips that came when he was tryingnotto smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. She preferred it to many of the proper smiles she’d ever seen. “I actually came to ask if you had plans this evening. I do not don the Rudolph sweater lightly, and it’s time for my annual drunk Christmas night with my sisters and Leo.”
“Your… what?” Was this some quaint English custom that she should be aware of? It didn’tsoundterribly quaint, but lots of things here sounded nothing like what they actually were, so maybe it was just a continuation of that noble tradition.
He waved a hand. “We started it when I was at uni, and it’s continued ever since then. Lizzie is a more recent addition to the guest list,” he added hastily, as though concerned she’d think he’d been leading his adolescent sister into vice and sin. “We compete to make the best Christmas cocktails and do a blind taste test.”
“How blind can the taste test really be, if there are only four of you?” she asked skeptically.
“Five, now, because Jess comes too. And it used to be six—Leo broke up with his longtime girlfriend a few months ago.”
Charlotte hesitated; she knew that Ava and Kit didn’t have plans tonight, other than a delivery pizza and watching some of the oldBake OffChristmas specials (further proof that Christmas was bad:the fact that they sprinkled a bunch of fake snow in a random field in Berkshire, had the bakers don Christmas ensembles, and expected people to ignore the fact that there were green leaves on all the trees outside; this holiday wasso stupid).
She should say no. Should resist this strange pull, which made her feel nervous and exhilarated and worried, all at once. If it had just been simple attraction, she’d have known what to do with it—it was maybe not the world’sbestdecision to sleep with the guy she’d just entered into a business arrangement with, but she was pretty sure they’d be able to handle it like adults, if that was all it was.
The problem, however, was that she was growing increasingly worried that this was something else entirely—something more. Something that she’d find it harder to walk away from.
But when he looked at her the way he was now—the arrogant smile gone, something close to naked hope in his eyes—and the air still felt charged between them, and every sentence they exchanged somehow felt full of possibility…
She didn’t want to say no.
The ugly Christmas sweater seemed to be a family thing. “Charlotte!” Eloise said, flinging open the door and looking thrilled—toothrilled—to see her. “Graham didn’t tell us that he’d invited you.” She turned and called over her shoulder, “What an interesting omission.” She was wearing a sweater that looked as though 1993 had vomited all over it; there was a terrifying polar bear wearing a Christmas sweater of its own, and whoever had stitched on the eyes hadn’t filled them in with a different color thread, so they were the same red as the sweater, giving the polar bear a slightly demonic look.
Charlotte smiled a bit uncertainly, and then lifted the bottle of bourbon she carried. “I brought cocktail provisions?”
Eloise flung a dramatic hand before her eyes. “Don’t show me! We’re not meant to see any of the ingredients anyone’s bringing!”
“How on earth can you possibly do a blind taste test if you all need to assemble the cocktails?” Charlotte asked as Eloise stepped back to let her into Graham’s flat, on the first floor of a terraced house on a quiet, tree-lined street a couple of blocks from the Chiswick high street. She noted the sleek shoe rack just inside the door, and toed off her own boots, feeling very pleased that she was wearing herFuck off, I’m readingsocks, which she’d bought matching pairs of for herself and Padma a few years back.
“You can’t,” came Graham’s voice from another room, in answer to her question. “The notion of the blind taste test is a complete fiction that Eloise insists on clinging to.”
“Let me have my illusions!” Eloise smiled cheerfully at Charlotte, then led her into what turned out to be the kitchen.
