Page 44 of Holiday Romance
“I love it,” I correct, tracing the scrawled words.Ask for the handmade butter. Steal it if necessary.“It’s like reading a diary.”Tasting menu is worth the overtime. Flirt with Diane to get the good table.“You got it months ago?”
“When you know, you know.”
And he kept it all this time. Just to give to me.
“Uh-oh,” Andrew says as I start to choke up. “Here they come.”
“They’re happy tears,” I assure him.“Christmas tears. It’s perfect, thank you.” I clutch it to my chest, twisting so I can hug him.
“You’re welcome,” he murmurs, squeezing me back. “Happy Christmas, Moll.”
A phantom voice echoes throughout the terminal, announcing a twenty-minute delay to our flight, but neither of us mind so much. In that moment I think I would have taken a twenty-hour delay so long as I got to spend it with him.
* * *
Now, Paris
“What do you mean,my bag isn’t here?”
I stare at the woman behind the counter as she stares right back, her nude lipstick perfectly applied as she smiles apologetically at me.
“My stuff is in that bag,” I say stupidly.
“I’m sorry.”
“You lost it?” This is a joke. This is a terrible, very unfunny joke. I almost expect a camera crew to come leaping out, announcing I’m on some cheap reality show. I barely slept on the flight to Paris, after barely sleeping at the airport, after barely sleeping since I left Chicago. It’s the 23rd of December. I have not had a shower in forty-eight hours, the timing of my contraceptive pill isextremelymessed up and they havelost my bag?
“They put our luggage in at the same time!” I exclaim. “How did they lose mine and not his?”
“Maybe yours was too small,” Andrew mutters behind me only to quickly look away at the death glare I send him.
“We didn’t lose it,” the woman reassures me. “We know where it is. It’s in Argentina.”
“ButI’min Paris.”
“We’ll have it on the next flight over.”
I resist the urge to drop my head to the counter. “But we’re not staying here. We’re trying to get to Ireland.”
“Again, I’m extremely sorry.” Her polite tone doesn’t change, but there’s a hint of steel behind it that tells me I’m not the first wailing passenger she’s had to andwillhave to deal with today. “We can compensate you per day your bag is not with you and fly it immediately to where you’d like it to go, but at the moment there is nothing more we can do for you.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry, madam.”
We hold each other’s gaze for a long second, but for once I’m the first to blink as I force out that awful customer urge to yell at the person who has nothing to do with my problem.
“Okay,” I say, sounding every inch the forlorn little girl that I feel like right now. “What do I need to do?”
One signed form and two minutes later, we trudge our way back through the entrance hall of Charles de Gaulle airport. The place is predictably packed and I feel my mood slip farther as I stare up at the departure board.
“We’ve missed the flight to Dublin, haven’t we?” It was going to be a tight squeeze anyway but waiting for my bag that never came had made it impossible. I don’t need to ask Andrew to know the rest of them are sold out.
“Don’t worry about it,” Andrew says gently. But I do. Because something as simple as getting home for Christmas should not be this complicated.
“There’s a flight tonight that’s booked out,” he continues. “There’s not much else we can do, but if we hang around, we can see if we can get on it and there’s always tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, which means we’re cutting it close. Too close to waste another day hanging around at an airport. Not that that seems to have occurred to Andrew. He’s not even looking at the board, he’s gazing unblinkingly into space, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He’s given up. Which is understandable. Giving up is by far the most appealing option right now. Definitely the easiest one.
